Looking for Heat - Micro-photography as a community service.

Note to Newbies:

Please consider getting older General Chemistry texts-- often "instructor's Editions" which are now seen in bookstores and online, as academic folks retire or go completely online. These texts of the last say 20 years and especially the recent ones, will give you the reasoning and the solved problems and the "dogma" which has quite well functioned as the "received" view, as say the era of "quantitative chemistry" (from about 1790-1850 to present ). I write this to help the Newbie appreciate the depth in this part of science and technology, both of the inertia and of the brilliance of current dogma. But most importantly how that dogma grew out of sustained, but open-minded investigation in the development of both chemistry and physics.

"Can" --- Thanks for your "amateur" efforts, which surely you know are possible raw material for future scientific advances.

-Longview

Alan Smith

I've gone back into this thread and searched on lookingforheat.com but I haven't found actual photos of what your microscope is capable of. Do you have some?

By the way, I tried doing some little electrodeposition experiments with my very limited, improvised equipment and realized that there is more control on the surface quality than I thought, which makes me wonder why it's not used more in LENR.

Also more vulgarly known as "electroplating". There are forums dedicated to the subject. I suspect that for LENR materials one might want to do almost the opposite of what would be normally considered a good surface finish.

With a microscope it would be easier to understand what's going on.

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for LENR materials one might want to do almost the opposite of what would be normally considered a good surface finish

That's correct, IMO. The Piantelli's whiskers are formed in opposite conditions than the compact layers during galvanoplastic, which require formation of surface passivation layers. I'm convinced, that what you need for effective cold fusion in metal lattices is this:

The photo appears to come from Wikipedia

It seems that stresses in the process can promote the formation of whiskers during electrodeposition.

From what I've read around on the subject using chlorides can lead to stresses compared to sulphates, and lead to a less ductile finish.

It's illustration of whiskers at zinc plated component. The stress doesn't lead into formation of whiskers during electrodeposition - you're just confusing info about tin whiskers with electrodeposition (a very common feature of Axil, who writes down information in few seconds after reading about it at some place without deeper understanding).

The sulfate anions are bi-dentate complexes and they absorb strongly at surface - but they form weak complexes in bulk. Whereas the chlorides form stronger coordination complexes in the bulk (they surround free nickel ions, thus decreasing their concentration in the bulk) - but they absorb only weakly at surface, having single charge per molecule. The result is similar like during deposition of whiskers in vacuum Knudsen cell from nickel iodide vapor: because the volume concentration of nickel ions is low and nothing blocks their motion along surface, they tend to deposit in 1D needle-like structures, which are protruding the bulk of solute. Whereas during electrodeposition exactly the opposite conditions are required: the concentration of metal ions at the bulk must be high and their migration at surface must be blocked with adding of surfactants, which keep their concentration low there. The surface migration of metal is what promotes the electrodeposition of whiskers and dendrites, because it allows atoms to concentrate at steps, edges and surface features of crystal lattice and to enhance them in this way.

From the above follows, the smoothly electrodeposited surfaces often have higher level of internal stress, which leads into formation of whiskers - but later at dry state - not during electrodeposition.

EDIT:

Quote from Zephir_AWT

From the above follows, the smoothly electrodeposited surfaces often have higher level of internal stress, which leads into formation of whiskers - but later at dry state - not during electrodeposition.

You edited to clarify what you meant and I edited accordingly, but it turns out that growthduring electrodeposition (which is what I first searched) is also reported:

http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/103/7/390.abstract

BTW, before you mentioned whisker formation here I had an extensive look on ways to increase stresses during the process, but for different reasons. That's why I probably jumped too early on their mention on that wikipedia page once I found that they were mentioned there too.

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it turns out that growth during electrodeposition (which is what I first searched) is also reported

Of course, I only doubted the "internal stress" connection - which applies only to slow growth of whiskers AFTER electro-deposition. The formation of needles is not difficult to achieve at higher current densities in every electrolyte, but the crystallization of true whiskers with one central dislocation is way more difficult to achieve.

Can't argue with that. So far I've only managed to obtain (by accident) dendritic-like growth during the process. I wonder what they would have looked like under a microscope.