Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Milling down copper oxide

Gargamel - 11-10-2015 at 08:50

For some experimentation I'd like to have some super fine CuO.

As an anti cake or catalyst for AN, or for Nanothermites for example.

Any stuff I could find is 63µm/200mesh or larger.

I'd like to have something like 5µm.


Do you have any idea if does make any sense to mill this down myself? I could use ceramic or steel balls in my ballmill for extra hard impacts.

Metacelsus - 11-10-2015 at 08:56

You could try making it yourself by decomposition of Cu(OH)2. That will give an extremely fine powder.

OneEyedPyro - 11-10-2015 at 11:59


5µm is much finer than your typical ball mill would achive in any reasonable lenth of time or perhaps in any length of time.

I suspect the decomposition method Cheddite Cheese mentioned wouldn't produce such a fine powder, it's definately worth a try but you'd need a microscope and a reference material to confirm the particle size.

Gargamel - 12-10-2015 at 09:51

I was under the impression that such oxides are rather brittle and thus mill fine, in contrast to ductile metals.

But I've never tried it thus far.


Quote:

you'd need a microscope

Yes!
That ranks pretty high on my buy list for the future, but I'd want a proper one and I'm pretty down and out...

Since a stage micrometer would be another expensive thing - What would you guys use as a reference material?
Something that has a rather narrow size distribution, but what?

Aurium - 16-10-2015 at 09:36

So just a quick post about making powders,
I found this video by chance and thought it may be of some interest,
Rock Disaggregator
Perhaps one can build a system like this, much smaller of course, and get good results powdering materials. Worth a try?