In my current job, I don’t do research, and I miss it. This is partially why I started the chemhacker project – it’s a way for me to take some fun chemical projects, research them, develop my own processes for making a few things, and maybe even make some new things.
Over the past few months, I have been slowly working on a process for making ferrofluids by making magnetite nanoparticles, then adding surfactants, and suspending them in a liquid. Starting only from (mostly) readily available household chemicals.
I started with a process that I know works, but has a lot of problems – the end product isn’t very good, and there are unnecessarily dangerous intermediate steps, but it works. I successfully ran through the bad process, listed all the problems I found, and prepared to move onto my new, safer, more efficient, better process.
And then it happened.
