My Current Project:

Right now I am doing undergraduate research with Rebecca Sunderman at The Evergreen State College. The research involves Sputter coating of thin films of metals. I am coating carbon fiber cloth with silver right now as it is what I had to work with. The goal of the project is to coat with palladium and titanium as opposed to platinum (very expensive). Why palladium and titanium? I am building a cheaper mouse trap, so to speak. palladium and titanium in combination will act as a catalyst to make a hydrogen fuel cell work and make clean electricity. platinum also does this, but again it is very expensive.

Sputter Coating:

To coat the carbon cloth I am using a Varian 3117 High Vacuum chamber which I have converted into a sputter coating chamber. The conversion into a Sputter Coater was accomplished by hooking 5000 Volts up to the electrodes you see in the photo above and jumping current across at low pressure ~10 torr. A flow of electrons leaps from one set of electrodes to the other smacking into gas particles (argon) fed into the chamber which imparts energy to them. Given this energy they become plasma (excited gas). Most of the excited gas particles lose their energy by emitting a photon (light, which is why it glows). If all goes well, some of them impact the metal(s) I have placed in the chamber knocking some of the metal into a gas phase as well. This could be thought of as a mini game of billiards where the stream of electrons is the cue stick, the argon is the cue ball, the metal being all the numbered balls, and the carbon is the pockets. The metal gas particles float around and some of them land on my carbon fiber cloth bonding to it (coating). Fortunately you only need a thin film of the metal to be deposited.

Eventually I will coat carbon fiber cloth with palladium and titanium and in turn build a hydrogen fuel cell with what I've made. I am making progress. I have made plasma (1% excited gas particles that play a pivotal role in the process). I recently coated my first sample of carbon with silver and confirmed that using a Scanning Electron Microscope (check out my photo section for more)

Next: some tweeking of the voltage and a bit of modification to the electrodes. Also, purchase a palladium-titanium target and run more tests.

Sweeping in The Clean Energy Era one step at a time.