We use this at work to bond power MOSFETs to copper bus bars. The trick is that the surfaces you want to bond should be tin-plated. You don't need solder film, and the joints are incredibly strong. I have tried breaking them apart by hand and cannot.

I have talked to the person that makes these in the UK. They make it by metal evaporation in a vacuum chamber. It's pretty expensive stuff.

Seeing a HUGE sheet of this, or roll that is unrolled, would make for an AMAZING episode on one of those Slow Motion Channels!

What an interesting material. That stuff really shows how reactive some metals are when combined. Would love to see some more experiments with it!

It's a narrow range of solder thicknesses that this can work in. Al embrittles tin joints so you can't make the solder too thin either. If the surface isn't wetting then you may need to flux to remove the oxidation barrier. That and sometimes the solder you are using just doesn't form the right intermetallic with the surface finish. You probably need to get application engineer support from Indium Corp directly to get this to work, which explains why nanofoil hasn't really taken off despite being around at least 10+ years.

I look forward to posts from this channel more than any others by a long shot, with few exceptions outside of Tech Ingredients and a few machining channels I watch.

I wonder if you could make a version of that by electroplating on the thin alternating layers by alternating the material between two different electrolysis containers.

Ben, I am very local to you and am a goldsmith. I've got many tools in my workshop that I feel would be very useful to many of your projects. Some of these tools are a rolling mill (would have been useful in today's video) and a powerful ND-YAG 80-joule laser welder that is normally used to weld micro scale for repairing things that are heat sensitive and casting equipment for lost wax casting. My friend recently contacted you regarding some holographic and interferometry equipment I wanted to donate to you, however, you simply don't have space for it. I get it, I have a fairly large workshop, and still, I have run out of space. my shop is in Albany CA, I offer you free use of it and any tools I own, and do feel I can occasionally be of great help to some of your projects. bye bye and maybe you will read this :)

I wonder if ESD static discharge is enough to set it off ... would be interesting to see a video where you tried

This is sick! I’d love to see you try making some in your sputtering chamber. I bet if you had one sputter gun for each metal you could just rotate a stage between them at a prescribed time interval and somewhat automate the production

Nice one Ben! It's like 'sheet thermite' (without the gassing). 👍😎

As a ground plane in PCBs, this'd be neat for self-destructing electronics, although soldering it up without setting it off would be tricky.

soldering a joint that big would be impossible with an iron so the reactive foil is actually super impressive it made it stick at all

Try initiating the reaction by squeezing it real hard and then adding a bit more by striking it with a small hammer. This might enable it to initiate in multiple points at once, creating an even faster heat pulse.

I get hyped every time you post a piece of content Ben. If memory serves you’re still working at verily? I can’t imagine trying to balance my brain between the two. Kudos and keep doing what you’re doing my guy 🤛

the best part of this channel is that everything here is INDUCTRIAL level and he presents like a secondary school level of difficulty level .............. excellent content

5:34 for something as large as that (high thermal mass) preheating all parts to say 100C or 120C will help. As an experienced "big" PCB reworker, the bond had all the visuals of a way-too-cold joint. On smaller parts (1-2% of the mass you used ) it would have probably been a much better bond. Heck even a domestic hairdyer may help (I use one as a preheater to do PCB work on large PCBs and large components with lead-free solder such as power transformers, large RF screens and stripline filters)

I need that coffee mug in my life.

Indium corp. has a half-decent YT-channel too, where they showcase all these fancy nanolayer-materials. Another "hidden gem" is nickel-plated (electroformed) bellows made by one "Servometer" co. They use a sacrificial aluminium (turned) mandrel, deposit nickel on it, then melt away the core. Amazing properties in the thin and isotropic nickel-layer deposited thusly ..

I love the mug! That analogy works on so many levels.

Ben + flammable solid = interesting video! That's a really unique way to provide the heat source for soldering.

Just after this material was invented, and I would swear they were using aluminum-titanium layers at that time, I saw a company chemist demonstrated it at a chemical industry convention. Item 1, he had brought the material to the convention in his personal luggage on an airplane (gulp). And 2, a potential app was using it to glue ceramic armor to armor plate for tanks. Funny stuff.

Awesome! I don't recall ever seeing this material or even property before. Very awesome!

So wait, this material is literally just super-thin laminations of nickel and aluminum? That's wild.

Couldn't be any simpler could it? That's amazing. Never heard of this before.

Your process for making flat solider was on point. Thought it was a brilliant cheap solution.

You should be able to use this to solder a heatsink to a CPU to maximize thermal coupling, improving the thermal dissipation, thus allowing one to overclock for higher performance.

I imagine if we can make a grid/mesh/brush-shape from the heating material, experimenting with surface area, we can get interesting results

Beautiful high speed footage

This is super stuff AS. Look forward to try this stuff myself. Nice work.

I always enjoy your subjects and videos. I'm just an ol Tennessee mountain hilbilly, but I always learn a new thing or two each time you upload. Thank you.

You are a truly remarkable scientist. I work in a scientific enviroment for 8 years now and even in face of all the theoretical competence only a few are able to demonstrate and explain their work in a language that is very understandable and informative. This extra effort makes a good scientist in my book. 👍

Fascinating stuff, thank you for stretching my horizon with every video!

Your videos almost always introduce me ro something ive never heard of.

I believe there is an explosive smokeless delay fuse that works in a similar fashion. I know it uses a wire passed through a dissimilar metal tube. One of the metals is Palladium the other is aluminium or a silver copper mix. When heated at one end,the metals, melt, forming an aloy, releasing considerable amounts of heat. The advantage is ignition without the release of any smoke or gas. I think it is sold under the trade name pyrofuze.

Nity as always ! Yes, use it in a project soon.

kind of reminds me of thermite, except without the exchange of oxygen. i wonder if this would work with aluminum and nickel powder?

We need more science guys like you. Bravo!

Thanks for showing off this niche soldering tech, good to have in the bag of tricks.

That’s a really nice mug.

Palladium/Aluminum wollaston process wire is impressive, if I remember correctly. The heat of solution of these two metals is enormous.

Never knew something like that even existed!!! You have the most interesting experiments.

Yet another piece of knowledge to show how much I struggle to understand thermodynamics.

Thank you! This is incredibly useful. I didn't know of such material. This would definitely be useful for transducer/signal source mounts without destroying parts with extended heat.

Looks like something a machine could do during a manufacturing process;. Great video, that slo-mo really helps.

This is so cool! Also i love that capacitor mug!

Wow, this is yet another glimpse into the future of manufacturing, like ultraviolet welding, and sonic welding.

I discovered something similar. I own a heat treating company any while processing Titanimum I noticed a weird in phenomenon. I heated the Titanimum to about 1600° and water quenched. Then back home to the oven and then as it was heating all the sudden a real bright spot started at an edge that was brighter then the black body color of the oven. This bright spot traveled through the entire disk of Titanimum quickly. Now the entire dial was glowing much brighter then the actual inside of the oven. This did not happen the first time I heated it. Don’t know what caused it but it was VERY noticeable and maybe had to do with the crystal structure changing. It was grade 2 Titanimum disks that where about .02” thick.

Holy crap that's incredible! how is it made? i had no idea something like that existed. But now i've seen it in action, it feels like something super obvious that i should have known. Amazing stuff. Are there special procedures to cut it? i'd imagine you wouldn't want the roll/sheet to go off before you could use it.

Thanks for sharing this fascinating material!

I never regret the patreon deduction as it means I get to see another excellent video by you.

Love the capacitor mug in the background!

**I WANT THAT LIQUIDENERGY MUG RIGHT NOW** It would be even funnier if it had the capacity be the actual amount of fluid it holds!

Like a mini Higgs mechanism sombrero! So cool. You do the best science vids on the whole website 😊

Fascinating material!

Really cool application👍

Alright that might be one of the coolest things ever filmed on a kronos. Thanks for sharing!

You're so cute when you show us awesome products!

Love the can capacitor coffee mug !!

At 2:11, you can see that the reaction starts at one electrode. This reminds me of welding talk, where the polarity of the electrode is said to increase or decrease the "heat" in the weld.

That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing!

This is extremely fascinating!!

Really cool! Thanks for sharing!

A similar alloy reaction was used to make smokeless delay fuses for explosives. The fuses were made from a pair of thin concentric wires made of two different metals. When ignited, the two metals combined to form an alloy that liberated considerable heat in the process. As no smoke, or gas, is generated in the reaction, the fuse can be completely enclosed, it also does not require oxygen.

A significant charge stored in this capacitor mug, ~3.5 gigajoules (821 mega calories). Now I see the source of the energy for all this magnificent things you are doing ..

Thanks for the videos!

Great video, interesting material

I didn't expect it to be such a quick video. Knowing this channel I woul've thought you'd try to make it yourself.

Holy crap, that coffee mug is awesome

Really enjoyed the video

always enjoy your videos

that's awesome it kind of works the in the same manner as a stud welder, an instant burst of heat that does not really heat the bulk material much at all.

Very cool! Would be interesting to see them stacked.

Quite a lot of light, reminds of old flash bulbs

Thank you, I have found it quite interesting

interesting material, both aluminum and nickel work well to very thin plating so you could be able to plate both in alternating processes

"This message will self destruct in 10 seconds."

Seems like this would make an excellent ignition source for rocketry. I'm specifically thinking of so-called "solid-state rockets" where the thrust comes from propellent stored in wells on the surface of a block. Each well is able to be individually triggered by controlling hardware. They're intended for use in satellite station-keeping in situations where other methods aren't viable due to mission length or other factors.

That is indeed, a very cool material

Fascinating -thanks.

Great as always!

That's the spiciest puff pastry dough I've ever seen! I bet manufacturing this stuff is a little spooky.

the biggest detriment to soldering is surface oxidation, also in preparing your thin piece of solder if you didn't use enough flux or kept it molten to long it may have become oxidized

very interesting material

Perforate 2 Al-Ni allloy sheets and sandwich the solder between them and fold the sheets at the edges, that should allow solder flow and contact with both the heat and the surfaces to be joined.

This makes me wonder if most meta-materials will have the potential to literally explode when exposed to heat.

Fascinating stuff! Can think of a lot of uses, most of them explosive 🙂

That's really wild. It's like a corner case in physics.

Hi Applied Science, Nice video again. The phenomenon is known in the explosive and propellant field as two fine ribbons of metal that are intricated or twisted and that could be ignitated by a spark or heat by generating high luminosity, fusion and alloying of the two metals with help of atomic mixing and entropic desorder (chaos). It is thus a purely entropic process and doesn't involve oxido-reduction or chemical reaction. The name refers to into English (or into French) to "coruscative alloy mix" (sometimes written as corruscative in old texts) (aliage coruscatif) It doesn't per se require to be thin (submicronic or nano) but it speeds things up because of the intimacy of the solid reactants... just like grinding finer oxidiser and reducers into a pyrotechnic mix will speed up the burning rate to several MACHs instead of slow burning. It is written in one of my Explosives 4th Edition book from Rudolf Meyer to be able to acheive a burning rate of a few meters/s and some mixes up to a few 100 meters propagation rate (usually lower than MACH 1 - thus a bit like a deflagrating material - low burning explosive material - often below or much below sound spead in air and especially into the material - speed of sound in hard metals can be up to 1-6 km/s) what contrast a lot with usual detonating materials (detonating at 3.000 m/s (about MACH 10) up to 10.000m/s (about MACH 28 yes)) I hope this will help you a bit. PHZ (PHILOU Zrealone from the Science Madness forum) - (and A.O.L. (alt. engr. chemistry, alt. engr. explosives, rec. sci. pyrotechnics, ...))

looks like a good candidate for Sci-Fi self heating ramen.

i wish he'd tried the soldering with 2 sheets of reactive foil stacked in between the solder. Or 3 or 4 - in fact, it'd be cool to keep increasing the number of reactive sheets, and see if there's some sort of limit to the effective number you could use. Maybe do it outside, behind ballistic glass, though.

I heard something similar being used in ETRONX cartridges as an igniter instead of conventional ammo primer. There it was referred to as just "heating foil element", so i didn't knew what exactly it was, but I bet it was this thing.

interesting it was, indeed, thanks as always!!!

This will make a great alternative to a musical birthday card!

yay, my favorite notification! love you Ben!

This would make a great initiator for an explosive. No need for bulky primers, just a couple of wires, a switch and a battery.

Really cool concept. I wounder if you could wrap the material around a two solder tinned wires that were twisted together and the heat generated would melt the solder.

I'm surprised you didn't prep the surfaces with sanding and flux.

I wonder if it would work better with solder paste. You could either dispense it or vary the pressure to change the layer thickness.

Cool. Loke into Andrea Rossi's research of the E-CAT system and its use of nano particle Ni/Al/H. Very high energy density out.