From: tucker@mitre.org (William Tucker)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Doping Mercury
Keywords: Re: Doping Mercury
Date: 25 Jan 93 15:59:18 GMT
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA, USA

Hello Josh -


> in other words, 'doped' mercury would look and act
> like mercury with maybe some odd elecrical properties,
> not like gold?


I don't know. It could look and act differently. Most doping in
the semiconductor realm affects electrical properties. Colin was
right about electrons controlling chemical reactions. However, it
is the Atomic number that determines whether a substance is a
particular element or not, this is from the number of protons
that it has. Electrons exist in the exact number as there are
protons in an unionized element.

> of the metals which are said to be used in the preperation
> of the philosopher's stone, one (iron) has odd electrical
> properties (ferromagnetism, of course). I don't know that
> I see any immediate connection....

I'm really out of my league in speaking about alchemy. There are
probably combinations of things which have unlikely properties,
witness the superconducting substances and advances made in the
area of ceramic for car engine parts. Helium also has weird
properties, flows uphill in liquid state. Water has an
enormous suface tension, such that striking it's surface with
an iron rod with great force will straighten an iron rod out
(an old mining trick for straightening out dynamite "tamping"
 rods). Who know? My stuff is more mind related, or developing
awareness.


> most ionic substances exist as gases, eh?


Ionic substances exist in all forms. An ion means the element
has a charge, it's either missing or has too many electrons.
An isotope means that it has an imbalance in nuetrons, like
deutirium. There are supposed to be as many nuetrons as there
are protons in a stable atom too, just as there are supposed
to be the same number of electrons as there are protons.



In semiconductors the dopants
are not ionized, they just have tendencies to gain or lose an
electron based upon their outer electron shells, when electricity
is applied, like normal shells consist of eight electrons, an atom
with seven in it's outer shell would want to gain one more to become
"more" stable; an atom with one electron in it's outer shell would want
to lose that electron to have a more stable electon configuration, but
only in the presence of excess energy like electricity or as in the solar
cell, impingent light.

The dopant is actually combined with silicon gas to get a better
mixture and because the deposition method allows them to make
tiny circuits using photographic masks. The process is like taping
off a car for painting, only in the case of semiconductors
multiple layers of paint (silicon + dopant) are deposited on the
chip. The pattern layed down with the (paint) mixture of silicon
and dopant is in the case of semiconductors the circuit.

Multiple layers of (silicon + dopant) are
layed down on the silicon wafer to achieve semiconductor circuitry.
The circuitry is microscopic in size. The masks are actually
like negatives that light is shown thourgh, onto the wafers
after they've been painted with light sensitive stuff, it hardens
when exposed to light. After a wafer has been masked off it goes
through a deposition cycle, then the mask is dissolved and a new
one layed down, and the process is repeated until the circuit is
built. There can be multiple copies of the same circuit on a single
chip. Hope this isn't too vague, if it is let me know.

> josh

See ya.

Wm T.


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