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Metallic Glue Can Bind Metals Without Heat

Nanotechnology scientists have developed a metallic glue that can bind metals together at room temperature. MesoGlue can bind metals to other surfaces without soldering or pressure. It could potentially change the landscape of electronics. EurekAlert reports: “MesoGlue was founded by Huang and two of his PhD stu­dents: They had a dream of a better way of sticking things together.” Those “things” are every­thing from a computer’s cen­tral pro­cessing unit and a printed cir­cuit board to the glass and metal fil­a­ment in a light bulb. The “way” of attaching them is, aston­ish­ingly, a glue made out of metal that sets at room tem­per­a­ture and requires very little pres­sure to seal. “It’s like welding or sol­dering but without the heat,” says Huang, who is pro­fessor and chair in the Depart­ment of Mechan­ical and Indus­trial Engineering. In a new paper, pub­lished in the Jan­uary issue of Advanced Mate­rials & Processes, Huang and col­leagues, including North­eastern doc­toral stu­dent Paul Elliott, describe their latest advances in the glue’s devel­op­ment. Our curiosity was piqued: Sol­dering with no heat? We asked Huang to elaborate. On new devel­op­ments in the com­po­si­tion of the metallic glue: “Both ‘metal’ and ‘glue’ are familiar terms to most people, but their com­bi­na­tion is [...]