If you’ve ever soldered or welded, you’ll know that things get pretty hot. MesoGlue intends to fix that. It’s a room-temperature metallic glue that lets you stick parts together with reckless abandon and electrical control. The most interesting part of the entire system is that it allows us to solder parts onto boards without heat which will lead to press-fit electronics which, in short, is an amazing development.
These sorts of things are still fairly uncommon and the fact that it works at all should do much to improve the growth of DIY electronics and even reduce the energy needed to solder PCBs en massed. The MesoGlue Silver looks and acts like regular silver solder and you can even use the glue to attach chips to heatsinks permanently without thermal paste, a boon for high-performance computing folks. It’s a really cool technology that may change the way we make electronics.
Founded by Prof. Hanchen Huang and Paul Elliott of Northeastern University along with Prof. Stephen Stagon of the University of North Florida, the company is still in its early stages but should be ready to rock and roll soon.
“Both ‘metal’ and ‘glue’ are familiar terms to most people, but their com­bi­na­tion is new and made pos­sible by unique prop­er­ties of metallic nanorods–infinitesimally small rods with metal cores that we have coated with the ele­ment indium on one side and galium on the other. These coated rods are arranged along a sub­strate like angled teeth on a comb: There is a bottom ‘comb’ and a top ‘comb.'” said Huang. “We then inter­lace the ‘teeth.’ When indium and gallium touch each other, they form a liquid. The metal core of the rods acts to turn that liquid into a solid. The resulting glue pro­vides the strength and thermal/electrical con­duc­tance of a metal bond. We recently received a new pro­vi­sional patent for this devel­op­ment through North­eastern University.”
“The metallic glue has mul­tiple appli­ca­tions, many of them in the elec­tronics industry. As a heat con­ductor, it may replace the thermal grease cur­rently being used, and as an elec­trical con­ductor, it may replace today’s sol­ders. Par­tic­ular prod­ucts include solar cells, pipe fit­tings, and com­po­nents for com­puters and mobile devices,” he said.
It it saves me from burning my little fingers while making an electronic clock, I’m all in.
