Note that I am just testing out different techniques, so I have not set up the thermocouples to precisely measure the temperatue.
On Tuesday, I developed a new method of putting water, isopropanol, or methanol on one slide then squishing the other slide on top of it to fill the gap with the afformentioned liquid. The slides are slippery at first, but as they dried, which took about 15 minutes, the bond forms. The bonds were strong enough that I could just barely push the slides appart by applying pressure to the side using my thumbs. I prepared 4 samples this way, 2 with iso and 2 with meth. I took one of each and heated them on Medium for 30 minutes under the brass hunk with the aluminum square on the bottom and copper foil on both sides of the samples. Earlier in the day, I tried heating them without the weight on top, but the heat just broke the bond. I took the remain two and set them aside as controls.
On Thursday, I returned to check the bonds. The heated samples had broken. I intented to check on Wednesday, but I was sick from food poisoning, so I do not know whether the bonds broke immediately after heating or due to sitting for an extra day. For the control samples, one also had a broken bond, but the other had become even stronger.
I noticed that, when the slides are successfully bonded, the shape and appearance of the Newton's rings change, which can be seen in the pictures. I speculate that the circles on the unbroken control are the bonded regions. Ideally, we want to see no Newton's rings.