Hello everyone, I am currently in my second Erasmus semester at Hochschule Karlsruhe (Hs-KA) probably coming from TUIASI where I study Mechanical Engineering, while at Hs-KA I am dying my Aerospace specialisation. But I took this Micro Technologies Lab for fun and credits, and the project is this Anisotropic Magnetoresistive Slurry that we will have to print on an elastic circuit board. The professor and my partners are from some kind of Electric Engineering/Microsystems, neither is from chemistry, Hs-KA had no chemistry faculty, and the professors from my University are not hurrying to email me back. And so we are stuck, circling back and forth with theory and nothing more for already one and half months.
The problem is that we have several combinations of materials and we’re not sure which ones to use. The professors coordinating the project specialize in microelectronics, not chemistry, so they’re not sure either.
For now, we have decided to use nickel-iron permalloy powder as the base material, although we are also considering the option of a silver-based permalloy. However, the biggest problem lies in choosing a binder and a solvent, since we do not know how compatible they are with each other. For example, we’re considering using PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) in combination with water, but water is polar, and we’d prefer the solvent to be non-polar and organic in nature. We’re also considering coagulants such as SBS+Xylene, PEG, and Styrene-Butadiene, but we’re not sure which ones we should use. We are also considering using Terpinolene (which apparently prevents the formation of perma-alloy lumps and ensures a better-dissolved mixture), but again, we are not sure if it is the right choice. If you can help us with a recommendation or some recipes that include the ingredients described above, or if you know someone who could help us, we would be very grateful. I should also mention that it would be preferable for the ingredients to be relatively affordable, even though the university is covering the cost.
I would deeply appreciate just about any kind of help.