How To Make Conductive Paint

hello and welcome back scitei tech in this video i'm going to do an experiment with making conductive paint and i'm going to use various materials to see which one works the best and see which one's the most conductive let's get started i have right here the six volt lantern battery and what i need to do is i need to open it up and extract the carbon electrode rods let's get started first what i need to do is take this slit screwdriver and place it right onto the seams prying it open won't work so what i'm going to do is take a small hammer and tap it out and there the seal is now cracked open it up and pull out the battery cells that are inside that's very interesting looking pull it out just like this and as you can see it is just simply four battery cells which means i'll have four carbon electrode rods next what i'm going to do is just simply cut all the wires and i'm going to wear gloves because manganese dioxide is very messy and also have a face shield for protection and a face mask because you don't want to breathe the particles of graphite take some pliers and pull out the carbon electrode rod with using a twisting motion finish pulling it out with using my hand and as you can see wearing gloves is necessary you get this sticky stuff on your hands and there i have the carbon electrode rod now repeat the same process three more times and there i have all four carbon electrode rods next what i need to do is take the carbon electrode and just simply wash off the manganese dioxide that's on it next monday lighter and burn off the wax coating that is on the carbon electrode rod and as you can see from the heat you can see the wax is starting to melt and starting to burn and one important thing i must say you should do this in a well ventilated area because the smoke will irritate your eyes next take a paper towel and wipe off the excess burnt wax and as you can see this side of the carbon rod is now clean what i need to do is repeat the same process on the opposite end and there the carbon electrode rod is now clean next i'm going to take a mortar and pester take the carbon electrode rod place it inside and smash it and grind it up into a fine powder and there as you can see i have a fine powder next i'm going to transfer this powder into this jar carefully don't spill and there i have now fine graphite powder dust ready to use and these are the items i'm going to use for this experiment and as you can see these three items right here i'm going to see how conductive they can be combining the graphite with distilled water combining the graphite with salt and distilled water combine the graphite with just glue and i want to see how those three methods are and see which one's most conductive and then combine glue distilled water and salt with the graphite and see if all four mixed together and see how conductive that is first experiment is going to be the graphite in distilled water and now add a small amount of distilled water put a few drops in to see if i can turn this into a paste how interesting the water actually beats up add some more water that's very interesting apparently the surface tension on water is very high i'm going to try to see if i can physically break it and as you can see it's not mixing add more water is not really the solution this also tells me that graphite is not at all water soluble this is very interesting mix it around and you can see that physically breaking the surface tension does not work what i'm going to do is i have some dish soap i'm going to put a little bit of dish soap because dish soap has the opposite polar effect that's on the membrane on water and it will cause the water to break apart and cause it to break its surface tension adding a little bit of soap should allow this to mix right away as you can see it works instantly surface tension is breaking as you can see it's completely breaking apart so now let's see if this mixes and as you can see it's starting to work however i put too much water so what i need to do is add a little bit more graphite to make the paste a little bit thicker i have right here the second batch that i'm going to prepare to use for salt water i'm going to repeat the same process with using dish soap and i'm going to add salt into this batch for the saltwater method next i'm going to extract a little bit of this wet graphite and drop it into this little bit drier graphite hopefully i can make a paste out of this oh as you can see i made a little bit of a paste i'm going to try the really wet solution and see how that looks that looks okay i'm going to try this piste solution with mostly graphite powder and wet it a little bit and see how that looks oh much thicker very good okay that comes out much better okay so now i'm going to try the thicker one and make a line where it's just the water method technically it's water dish soap and graphite three ingredients for this first method now right here this three-volt button cell battery and i'm gonna go and measure where the leads are so that way i have an idea of how far the line should be put apart and i'm going to draw the lines over to this led put the graphite onto the leads of the led and now take the battery and place it onto it and see if it lights up as you can see it works the led lights up not very bright that's because using this much graphite has a very high resistance and the solution may not be conductive enough with that theory of resistance i should be able to use this 9v battery without damaging the led and there as you can see the led lights up brighter and the led is not damaged perfect as you can see this works very well next what i need to do is measure the resistance with using a multimeter because i'm curious to see how much resistance this has and as you can see the resistance measures up to 10 kilo ohms now measure the second line and see what that shows and as you can see this line here has higher resistance this measures at 70 kilo ohms and now let's try the saltwater method sprinkle in some salt crystals in the water graphite let it dissolve and then paint out the two lines place the battery in led whoops i accidentally bridged those two lines so i'm going to go ahead and draw the two lines again paint it so it comes out nice and thick to see if i can make it more conductive place in the three-volt cell battery and there as you can see the led lights up and it actually looks a little bit brighter very nice so as you can see saltwater method is a little bit more conductive repeat the same process with a 9 volt battery and wow it is much brighter still not damaging the led so the resistance is still there but a little bit less now take some measurements this line here is about 50 50 kilo ohm resistance 47 to 50 and then the second line is about 30 kilo ohm resistance so far the saltwater method is more conductive next i'm going to test out the third method take some of the graphite and mix it with this white glue as you can see the white glue method mixes with a graphite better it comes out more of a paste and it does not separate and now let's go ahead and test out this method and see how conductive this is and as you can see this paints very well much nicer than the other two methods the paint comes out much thicker and more consistent take the three-volt buttons on battery oh as you can see the led lights up not that bright but it still lights up now i can take the 9-volt battery and test it out okay as you can see it lights up a little bit brighter not as bright as the saltwater method but it still lights up very well this tells me that there is probably more resistance take a measurement how interesting it's about seven kilo ohms second one seven kilo ohms which tells me this method is far more consistent so this is the true resistance of this method i think the other method was not contacting very well and was causing it to fluctuate too much this method seems to work a lot better and now it's time to test out the fourth method let's combine everything together basically this contains salt distilled water glue and dish soap so only five ingredients mix it all together paint down the led and paint two lines this looks actually very clean and very nice now let's see how conductive it is oh how interesting using three volts the led is a little bit brighter okay so this is very good take the nine volt battery and as you can see it's extremely bright wow this is very good this method is extremely conductive and i'll take a measurement and as you can see it's about 47 kilo ohms the second line about 50 kilometers maybe 60. i would rather say about 30 kilo ohms and as you can see this makes a very nice paste very nice consistency ingredient to be able to make perfect conductive paint is used graphite mixed with water mixed with glue mixed with dish soap mixed with salt combining that all together gives you very low resistance paint and allows it to uh stick better and have a better pasty consistency there you have it now you know how to make your very own graphite paint with using very simple household products and being able to make conductive paint and there you have it thank you for watching sci-fi tech oh doing something new and don't forget to like and subscribe and of course click the bell icon to be notified for future sci-tic videos till the next tech goodbye

Channel: SciTyeTech

Views: 43,718

Keywords: science, electronics, chemisrty

Id: OywhOmznCTM

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 09 2022