Yes, liquid gallium can indeed be functionalized with monolayers.

Please see our Nano Letters paper on liquid gallium-indium eutectic nanoparticle work and the referenced in it: Nano Letters 11, 5104 (2011).

Thanks for this really useful.

Am I correct in saying that you don't get oxide layers forming once the SAM has assembled?

What material containers do you suggest to prevent the Gallium sticking to everything!

I've read some stuff about using HCl vapour to remove the oxide layer on the surface. I'm thinking producing some HCl vapour leaving this in a sealed container with the gallium and then adding some thiol-alkanes dissolved in Ethanol and leaving the ethanol to evaporate. You mention that the ethanol was degassed. How did you do this?

Sorry for the very basic questions it is just chemistry is not my thing!

Accidentially I came around the following article which is perhaps the one you already know. Otherwise you may find it useful:

Recovery of nonwetting characteristics by surface modification of gallium-based liquid metal droplets using hydrochloric acid vapor.

Daeyoung Kim, Peter Thissen, Gloria Viner, Dong-Weon Lee, Wonjae Choi, Yves J Chabal, Jeong-Bong J B Lee (2013)

ACS applied materials & interfaces 5 (1) p. 179-85

Yes. In the case that alkanethiols did not work, I would sugggest to use thiol derivatives of carboranes. One example on gold nanoparticles is in the reference Journal of American Chemical Society, 2012, 134(1), 212-221.

Please let me know [email protected] for more detail.

Thanks Robert, yes that article was the one I found. I tried the HCl vapour trick and it works nicely to remove the oxide film. The surface of the Gallium remains shiny and it has the added benefit that the Gallium Cl3 (I guess) no longer wets everything like the oxide film. The down side is it appears that on adding alkane thiols in ethanol (I tried 50mM which based on Paul Weiss' paper should be loads and left it for 3 hours before rinsing with ethanol) the chloride is not displaced! I'm wondering whether it might be worth me just scraping back the oxide film in the liquid state and pouring the thiol on top! A physicists approach to chemistry! Any suggestions for a more refined approach!?

Yes, we can greatly reduce oxidation if we internally "seal" the monolayer using the amide-containing thiols, We do get oxidation (at least when we ultrasonicate) with n-alkanethiols.

Clara- Thank you for the link to this paper.

We have done quite a bit with carboranes (thiols and selenols), but did not use them for this purpose. I would expect that there would be access to the liquid through domain boundaries.

See ACS Nano 3, 527 (2009), and Materials Science and Engineering Reports 70, 188 (2010), more shortly.

We have Tomas Base visiting us at UCLA for a few months and can try something here if it looks promising.

Hello Paul,

I remember your two interesting publications that you referenced in our jacs paper. I have been working and enjoying Boron Chemistry since 1980 so, I trust a lot of boron cluster for new promising materials. I met Base several years ago greetings to him. Great success,

Clara

Clara- We are newcomers to the field, but are extremely excited about cage molecule self-assembly.

I look forward to catching up in person. Any chance you will be at spring ACS in New Orleans, ICP in Leuven in July, or ChinaNano in September?

Warm regards, Paul

Paul, these scientific meetings are fantastic but the current Spanish economy does not allow to participate. But if you foresee any possible application of your interest in our expertise on Boron clusters just let's know. All the best, Clara

Clara - I am sorry about the situation there and hope that it improves soon. Will do re boron clusters.

Dear Michael Smith:

I am just addressing the following sentence at the second 'answer' of this trend: «What material containers do you suggest to prevent the Gallium sticking to everything!».

Considering corrosion, the following materials can be recommended for containers used with liquid gallium: fused quartz and fused silica (up to ~1050 ºC); sintered alumina or sintered BeO (up to ~1000 ºC); tungsten (up to ~810 ºC); graphite (at reducing atmosphere) and beryllium: both up to ~800 ºC; graphite (with steam vapour): up to ~650 ºC; tantalum (up to ~540 ºC); graphite (oxidizing atmosphere): up to ~500 ºC; niobium (up to ~450 ºC); titanium, molybdenum and the austenitic nickel-chromium-based alloy 'Inconel 625': all up to ~ 400 ºC; ferritic stainless steel (SS) AISI type 430 and austenitic SS AISI 347 (or the nearly equivalent ACI CF-8C): both up to ~350 ºC; porcelain (up to ~ 300 ºC), borosilicate glass of low coefficient of expansion (up to ~ 250 ºC); austenitic SS 316 AISI and polytetrafluroethylene (PTFE): both up to ~200 ºC. The temperatures are indicated for the atmospheric pressure, being no more than rather approximate guiding values.

Even not considering quantitative data on adsorption or contact angles, it seems that both graphite and PTFE may be promising container materials while attempting to reduce adsorption and wettability of the liquid gallium to the container surface. Higher adsorption and better wettability can be expected from glass, porcelain, and ceramic oxides.

Safety Note: molybdenum and tantalum can originate very toxic compounds; beryllium powder and its compounds are extremely toxic and carcinogenic.