Printing on ... nanoparticles

I am a researcher in nanoscience and spend most of my time working on top secret high – technie – technie stuff mostly involving disintegrating solid pieces of metals and turning them into thin, transparent layers. The fancy name for this is “sputtering” and if it does not say too much to you, just look around for a package of crisps and be thankful for it, since this is how the shiny aluminum coating is deposited on the bag.

Luckily my work is not related to chips, unless some distracted colleague forgets a pack near the lab (which for sure will disappear when I am around). The coatings I made have fancy, shiny properties, as being self-cleaning and antibacterial. Recently the research boss asked me to add some silver nanoparticles to one of them. I did so and the result was that it kinda turned dark in color, which is not very surprising, given that silver is what usually puts the B in B&W. That was enough for me that day, so I just put the samples in a dark drawer and went procrastinating. Few weeks later I was suprised to find that a chemical reaction occurred in that dark drawer and the coated glass was no longer dark. Furthermore, except for not being dark anymore it was kinda light sensitive. I hunted down some negatives I had from the recent B&W film development class I took.

It was that photo:

I just laid it over the Ag-nanoparticles containing glass and managed to get a print from the negative, onto the glass by shining powerful UV light.

The result:

Neat, huh? When I have time I will prepare a larger glass slide and try to work out a recipe which can be done safely at home, even if one does not have a solid metal – disintegrating machine (a.k.a. as DC sputterer in the fancy scientific circles).

geschrieben von bo-stefanov am 2014-11-19