![]() But that can be tricky too with a freely flowing liquid it can be hard to place the print precisely where you want it on a new surface.īut, as Zabow discovered to his surprise, a simple combination of caramelized sugar and corn syrup can do the trick. There are liquid techniques, where the transfer material is floated on the surface of water and the target surface is pushed through it. Using sugar and corn syrup (i.e., candy), researcher Gary Zabow transferred the word "NIST" in gold letters onto a human hair. They could also leave behind plastics or other chemicals that could be hard to remove or be unsafe for biomedical uses. There are flexible tapes and plastics that can do the job (like using putty to pick up newsprint), but these solids can still have trouble conforming to sharp curves and corners when the print is laid back down. But as the possibilities for semiconductor chips and smart materials expand, these intricate, tiny patterns need to be printed on new, unconventional, non-flat surfaces.ĭirectly printing these patterns on such surfaces is tricky, so scientists transfer prints. Traditionally, these tiny mazes of metals and other materials are printed on flat wafers of silicon. Semiconductor chips, micropatterned surfaces, and electronics all rely on microprinting, the process of putting precise but minuscule patterns millionths to billionths of a meter wide onto surfaces to give them new properties. Could regular table sugar be used to bring the power of microchips to new and unconventional surfaces? Zabow's findings on this potential transfer printing process were published in Science on Nov. ![]() The colors indicated that the arrays of microdots had retained their unique pattern. "It was those rainbow colors that really surprised me," Zabow recalls. But they weren't really missing instead of releasing into the water, they had been transferred onto the bottom of the glass where they were casting a rainbow reflection. Except this time when he rinsed out the beaker, the microdots were gone. He would just dissolve away the sugar, as normal. The sugar dissolves easily in water, freeing the magnetic dots for their studies without leaving any harmful plastics or chemicals behind.īy chance, Zabow had left one of these sugar pieces, embedded with arrays of micromagnetic dots, in a beaker, and it did what sugar does with time and heat-it melted, coating the bottom of the beaker in a gooey mess. It was only as a last resort that he had even tried burying microscopic magnetic dots in hardened chunks of sugar-hard candy, basically-and sending these sweet packages to colleagues in a biomedical lab. NIST scientist Gary Zabow had never intended to use candy in his lab. Place a picture or video of your version of magnetic putty in the comments below.The REFLEX process transferred 1-micron disk arrays onto the sharp point of a pin. ![]() What are you waiting for? Get going and make your own magnetic putty! If all else fails, take the fabric to the dry cleaners and tell them it's a silicone-based stain. Alternatively you can apply rubbing alcohol to area and work out the putty, try a concealed test-area first. If you get magnetic putty stuck to fabric you can try placing the magnet on top of the fabric and the putty may work it's way out (wait 24 hours). Use caution when playing with your magnetic putty. Of course, aside from being magnetic your putty still retains all the properties of the original Silly Putty.Ĭaution: Putty has been known to leave a residue on some surfaces, even more so with the iron oxide powder. Some frames have been sped-up to illustrate magnetic properties. There's plenty of fun to be had, check out the video I made with some of the fun you can do. ![]() You can stretch out a strand and make it follow your magnet, you can polarize your putty to work as a magnet itself, and then there's the classic of placing the magnet directly on the putty and watching it envelop the magnet. That's it, you're done! Grab your magnet and start experimenting with your new magnetic putty. ![]()
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