Method for Titanium Biomagnet Coating via Thermal Evaporation

edited September 2020 in Magnets

I want to ask if anyone has tried / is able to try coating a magnet through thermal evaporation. I understand full well that this might be a bit of a dumb question since most people don't own a vacuum pump, but I want to know if anyone's tried it nonetheless. It's relatively cheap, (and yes, I'm aware that relatively is doing a lot of legwork there,) but more importantly it's simple, when done well can provide a stunningly even coat, and can even be done with pure titanium.

All you'd need to do is take a titanium filament and run some current through it to heat it up while under a vacuum, and put whatever you want to be coated in with it. After a while, titanium atoms basically fly off the filament and onto the magnet.

Off the top of my head, heat might be a potential issue since it could potentially affect the strength of the magnet, however I don't think it realistically would since it doesn't really get too hot.

I don't have the means to try this since I don't even have a house to speak of right now, but I would love to know if somebody's already tried this or if someone with the means to try it would be interested enough to do so!

Edit: For the record, most thermal evaporator setups require a "boat," which is essentially a metal filament which won't melt that's used to heat up the material you want to coat your object, but even this would be totally unnecessary since you could just hook up a titanium filament directly into where the boat would go and it'll do the job just the same.

Comments

  • I really really like this idea, do you have any idea how we could test the stability of the coating after application? or how even it is, or anything? My only thought would be submerging it in water to see if it bubbles I guess?

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