They don't all point out that it sticks to pretty much everything; the
plastic vial with the sample in is mirror-coated on the interior, and
Web references state liquid gallium wets glass and porcelain (meaning
you can make mirrors with it).
Can you think of anything plausibly-available that gallium wouldn't
wet? I'm guessing teflon might work (to be obtained as smallest
available non-stick- coated bit of cookware not made of aluminium,
since liquid Ga dissolves aluminium nicely); is there a standard answer
to this?
Tom
Try silanizing the glass with Rain-X.
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf
When they manufacture the high-temperature thermometers with the liquid
Ga/In/Sn alloy, they have to coat the glass surface with gallium oxide
first. Ga2O3 is one of very few materials that does not get coated with
Ga.
I had some Ga + In eutectic once. It would "eat" pieces of aluminum
cans and leave a black powder that had about the same ability to "dirty"
the bench that graphite powder would.
I had the idea that it dissolved the Al, much the same way that Hg would
dissolve Au or Ag. Then the Al would oxidize at the air / solution
interface. If that was true, the black powder would be very, very fine
aluminum oxide.
I didn't pursue this much, but I am curious if my idea was in the
ballpark. Does anyone else know more?
I'm not completely sure about oxidisation at the interface. Gallium
definitely dissolves aluminum in that way, but I believe the result
isn't very reactive with air (though the aluminium reacts
enthusiastically, leaving impure gallium) if you add water.
I'd not be amazed if the black powder were some element alloyed with
the cans; I don't know if Al cans are pure Al or not.
Tom
Aluminum is alloyed with Fe, Mn, Si and other stuff for hardening.
The black crud was the micro-dispersed interstitial aluminides.
The surface tension of liquid gallium is absolutely enormous;
V Kolevzon, G Gerbeth - Journal of Physics D, Applied Physics, 1996
and the CRC handbook suggest that it's something on the order of 700
dyn/cm, even more than mercury.
By that argument the liquid gallium should be sitting in a lovely
shiny sphere, scarcely touching the underlying material and definitely
not sticking to it, almost regardless of the material.
Tom
The laws of physics should still hold here - pure mercury acts
appropriately for its surface tension. Virtually the only thing that
keeps it from having a 180 degree angle with a surface is its huge
density, so you have the classic balance between between surface
tension force and gravitational force. My first thought is that there
is some kind of surface contamination going on. In the paper you
cited, even this careful study came up with an "anomalously" low
surface tension for gallium, in the range of 700 instead of 900 dyn/cm,
which they attributed to a surface metal oxide or organic film.
Surface tension is an incredibly local event and can be completely
altered by the presence of a monolayer of a different material.
This website actually talks about the difficulty of getting _pure_
gallium to WET a surface! They have to go so far as to glow discharge
a molybdenum (high energy) surface just to get pure gallium to wet it.
So I think I've convinced myself anyway that it's surface contamination
that causes the anomalous wetting. Gallium is so high energy that it
collects everything around it and forms a film on its surface that
causes it to wet. So again, going to an oriented -CH3 terminated film
or -(CF2)nCF3 film should work! (lower surface tension than the
probable organic contaminants)