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SEM Wire Characterisation

Geschrieben von Mathieu Valat am .

This is Mathieu from Europe. I have interesting pictures to share with you all (with agreement of Pr.Celani).

I had the opportunity to use an SEM (scanning electron microscope) to look at the wires that Pr. Celani sent to us. The pictures are intentionally NOT downsized for you to have close look on them. If you can use a wide screen display and open your browser in fullscreen, you will surely enjoy the following.

Sample preparation is very simple since Francesco always detaches one end of the wire before sending it. We had to reduce its length on the treated side, where it looks greyer.

Light microscope revealed that the surface cracks under mechanical stress. Instead of only studying the surface of the wire we bend it to induce cracks on the surface and open cross sections.

The first picture shows the edge of one crack. We can see how the mechanical stress pealed a tick layer of matter from the surface of the wire. We suspect that this layer is the active material used during the experiment to host the hydrogen and generate the effect.

Is it a coating?

The second picture shows the edge of this crack. Without it, we are able to see the cross section of this "coating". On the right side some fluffy material sticked to the surface of the core. The core is also very interesting to watch, its roughness is very different compared to the surface. It is dramatically different in organisation like we can expect from an alloy metal.

Fluffy stuff on the side

Taking a closeup on the cross section, we are able to see how this matter is organised.

The coating is measured using a microscope tool just after the picture is taken. This measurement gives us a value of 16µm of the total thickness of the coating. Be aware that this measurement is not very accurate since the section measured is not parallel to the plane of the picture. But it gives you a range of value.

On the surface we have big grains of metal their depth is 6.6µm under the surface of the coating. We measured one grain that crystallised on the surface and is approximately 11.6µm. Again, this grain might not be representative of the rest of the surface.

The following picture is showing the diameter of the wire with and without the coating. Now we can have a better range of value for the thickness of the coating. We can say that it is more than 20µm thick. Knowing that Celani is starting with a 200µm constantan wire, the treatment is expanding its external surface by an order of two. This is not surprising knowing that Defkalion is talking about super expanded nickel structures as well as Celani does.

We can also see that the coating detaches itself from the core of the wire.

Diameter of the coating

Here we are looking at a detached part of the coating. We can see on the right side that there is a piece of the core of the wire that was about to detach. This gives an indication of how fasten the coating and the core are together without mechanical stress. This is very likely that the coating and the core are expanding at different ration under increasing heat, squeezing or making room for what is in the between.

But let's get to the last one.

This by far, the most interesting SEM picture. It shows a closeup of the internal surface of the coating.

The coating is made of superposed layers melted one by one uniformly at high temperature because each layer is uniform in surface shape until we get to another. This definitively looks to me like a high temperature treatment followed by a quenching, because the the layers didn't have time to crystallize, they kept a melted look. The inside looks smooth where the core is definitively rougher. We can notice a lower layer (closest to the core) because it detached and cracked from both the core other layers at the center of the picture. We can barely see the next one on the edge, at the bottom of the picture.

The lowest layer is thick it looks to be in the range of 1 to 2µm, however the other ones looks dramatically thiner, around 500nm or even less as it piles up.

 

So what can we summarise from this study:

  • The wire is composed of a core and a coating,
  • it is easily detachable from the surface,
  • the coating is made of superposed layers, which confirms Celani's claim,
  • the coating is at least 20µm thick,
  • it is in the range nanomaterial for the external layers, micromaterial for the internal layers of the coating.
  • we have big grains on the surface and disorganised metal in the core.
  • it looks amazing! (completely personal judgment ;)

That's all for today folks. More to come soon, as I have the EDS-X (energy dispersive spectroscopy X-ray) spectrum in my hands.

And don't miss tomorrow, BIG TIME!

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0 #12 Robert Greenyer 2012-11-12 12:30
@Jim

Our wire is supplied by Celani and his manufacturing partners

B
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0 #11 Jim Johnson 2012-11-12 04:23
Great work, all around. Great that you got to use a SEM. Query: have you compared your SEM images to the one's that Celani published (link to a copy, here)?

lenrconnect.com/.../...

Your 7th photo above and Celani's 4th (in his preso, many pages in) have very simliar looking features. It does not look like your wire has gone into the resintering that he warned about. And his photos describe the same sort of outer layer and cracking.

Looks very promising!
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0 #10 Robert Greenyer 2012-11-12 00:17
@ Ecco

It is step 4 in our plan as detailed here

quantumheat.org/.../...
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0 #9 Ecco 2012-11-12 00:03
It would be interesting to see SEM images of active wires after they have been used. But I guess this is for much later on.
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+1 #8 Robert Greenyer 2012-11-11 23:50
David, thank you for you analysis. It may be that there was an excited person run past the cell in a lab coat and force a gust of air past the shield.

In Korea, you could see clearly on Celani's outputs when the AC of the Daejon Convention Centre turned on and off.
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+1 #7 David Roberson 2012-11-11 23:31
Excellent pictures!

I made a couple of quick charts of the glass temperature and mica temperature versus time and it appears as if there is a rapid negative temperature transient in each curve followed by a recovery slope. The sharp drop shows up on the outside glass before the inside glass which suggests that the effect is external to the test device. Also, the magnitude of the variations tend to become less as you measure inward from the outer glass surface toward the mica.

Have you found a cause for this effect yet? The rate at which the temperature drops appears unusual. I was expecting a much milder slope.
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0 #6 Mathieu Valat 2012-11-11 22:38
As Bob mentioned Celani seem to consider the game won already. We'll se all together tomorrow though. I don't want to get too excited before we have the results we expect.

@Al Potenza
1 Control uses Isotan44. Same as Celani uses BEFORE his magic treatment happen.
2 It would be wrong to do it since the wire is loaded and producing heat...
3 It is a very relevant question since H2 is molecular gaz and He monoatimic gaz! That is why we did a run with Isotan44 under H2 and another with ACTIVE wire under He. The next blog post might clarify this.

You know, you can always use the forum to get answers to you questions.
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0 #5 freethinker 2012-11-11 21:43
Yes guys, this is awesome i/o from your ongoing project. Can only join the accolades - again. Very nice SEMs. :)
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0 #4 Al Potenza 2012-11-11 21:30
Sorry this is a bit off the current topic. I watched the video about calibrations but I am still unclear about what is being compared. In other words, what is different between "control" and "experimental" runs?

Will you be comparing the heat output of a loaded wire in helium to the same wire in hydrogen? Will you be comparing the heat output of the untreated constantan heater wire with that of the loaded/treated wire?

In other words, could you clarify exactly what components are being tested and in what atmosphere for, respectively, a blank run, a calibration run and an experimental run?

One concern I had was the difference between the thermal conductivity of hydrogen and helium. Will that effect be relevant and if so will it be considered?

Thanks! Sorry if this was explained and if I missed somewhere.
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0 #3 Robert Greenyer 2012-11-11 21:17
@ Kari - yes - absolutely bucket loads of NAEs mounted on a conductor

@ Carta - we do to - but we will be very lucky too, if we do, then it will be testament to the robustness of the Celani approach and his wire, if we don't - then that wont stop us, we are first timers at this experiment so we have to be guarded about getting too excited at this stage. The really positive thing was the drop in resistance seen during the early loading phase - this follows Celanis observation, let's hope that when we go to the next stage of the experiment we have the fortune to see the all important excess heat.

Remember - we are aware that things might not be perfect, but we are at this stage only trying to satisfy ourselves so that we can, with social help, take this to the world. We are so happy that we can share this with you as we try.
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0 #2 Carta 2012-11-11 21:08
I just hope you will be able to replicate excess heat.
But let me tell you one thing guys: YOU ARE GGGGREAT!

(Thanks to Prof. Celani too to experiment this)

R.
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0 #1 Kari 2012-11-11 21:07
Super,
This looks like lots of NAEs a la Storms...
Can't wait until tomorrow.
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