random gallistan thread

[coppercone2]

I was reading about this stuff. It's kind of expensive. They use something like it in the playstation 5 as a heat spreader and some people use it to cool CPU. It seems to have alot of weird applications in electronics.


Have you done anything with it? Seen it used in something cool?

I thought I might make some, I have some ancient Gallium. I hope this thread gets some interesting stories. Hopefully more then just overclocking stuff, unless its super extreme. I was hoping from tales from the physics lab.

got a quartz crucible, indium, tin and a teflon bottle for storage. I did some experiments on galium. It sticks to silicone rubber hose kinda. To teflon it leave a bit of a film and sticks a tiny bit, leaving a residue. I don't have quartz glass. Might get a quartz glass bottle if I like the performance of the crucible, otherwise I figure PTFE is good enough.  It looks like the galistan is less messy then galium from videos, so it might end up being pretty good.

[coppercone2]

after I left it out and was playing with it for a while, I noticed it got more sticky. I think it oxidizes pretty quickly and as it oxidizes it gets more sticky. I figure you should probably store this in a bottle with some argon to maintain consistency. It behaves much like solder that you know needs flux once its been out for a while.

[coppercone2]

OK I made it but the scale has 20G limit which I used for the gallium and then I had to eyeball it a bit because I wanted to get it done after a little rock fell out.

The stuff I made turned liquid but its been in the freezer now for a bit and I got some percipitate i can hear rattling around in the tube. The tin was also soldering type, maybe its not as pure as I thought. I figure the gallium should have been accurate to 50miligrams from 20 grams.

I heard you can basically freeze purify this stuff. It also coats glass really good (no quartz yet).

It looks like you need to be really precise when you make it. I was accurate to 5mg for the tin and indium (old mettler)

I think you can basically let it freeze (with the degenerate alloy forming on top), poke a few holes in it and then flip it so the good stuff drips down, hopefully. I think the frozen bits float to top and fuse and then you end up thinking that its all frozen but if you jab it the middle is not frozen but time will tell

if you wanna make gallium chunks, pour it out on a saran wrap , put it on something frozen cold like a steak you are planning to eat, then agitate it a bit by messing with the wrap to get like a gallium brittle. beware you will see the meat thaw under the gallium so you need to eat it (obviously both in saran wrap)


Also if anyone knows, the leftovers if you do a freeze purification, it sounds like you can turn that into better quality galistan. What do you need to add to that stuff? I wonder which proportion it needs


also don't freeze it in glass. It took out a vial when it froze. It was set to -14C, I thought it was 14F for some reason, maybe I did get it right, thats close IMO. good enough for goberment work

[coppercone2]

I left the galistan under mild HCl for a while now, it reacted somewhat. I poured out the water phase and added water and shook it, it formed very small beads that kind of flow. If you poke it around it will congele into dirty gallistan. A bi-phase mixture is not stable, you would need to use oil, for any exotic stuff