Moving Water Molecules By Light

Roland Piquepaille writes "An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Arizona State University (ASU) has discovered a new nanotechnology effect, the ability of moving water molecules by light. This is a far better way than current methods such as damaging electric fields and opens the way to a new class of microfluidic devices used in analytical chemistry and for pharmaceutical research. For example, this makes possible to design a device that can move drugs dissolved in water, or droplets of water and samples that need to be tested for environmental or biochemical analyses. Please read this overview for more details and references, plus an image of two water drops illuminated with a fluorescent dye and sitting respectively on a nanowire surface and on a flat surface."

Comments

Poorly written article - Here's what they mean:

[Anonymous Coward]

If you add a bunch of nanofibers to a wax coated surface, the water will "ball up" and move around more easily. If you make the nanofibers sensitive to light, you can control the speed with which the water moves over the surface by changing the light level.

Re:True or not?

[lpangelrob2]

It's not so much light moving the water, as I understand the article... it took a couple reads, but from what I can see, it's possible to overcome the fact that water sticks to an almost-non-stick surface by using light to generate a "lotus leaf" effect in the surface beneath the water... which appears to make an already slick surface even slicker.

This effect itself isn't all that new... it's in all those stain-repellent pants that are being sold now. Being able to control the effect with light is.

RTFA

[TheLink]

Looks like you didn't RTFA.

It's about changing the hydrophobic/hydrophilic (water repellent/attractive) properties of a _special_ surface using light. This doesn't work on just any surface.

I dare say the military would prefer to dehydrate parts of your body by vapourizing bits of it e.g. zap you directly with a powerful beam of light. Or ionizing air between a thundercloud and you so that a lightning bolt zaps you ( that's to make it look like an "Act of God").

Please stop

[Fnkmaster]

I appreciate that some of these stories submitted by Roland Piquepaille are about interesting topics, but EVERY single one of them includes at least one or two traffic-whoring links to his blog site, from which he derives advertising revenues. His blog site posts are generally completely inarticulate summaries and rehashings of the original articles that he writes, knowing that Slashdotters are too lazy to even read the artcle.

Hemos seems to usually be the culprit posting the Piquepaille stories. I don't mind if Hemos wants to post stories submitted by this guy (though often even the submissions are inaccurate summaries of the original articles), but it would be appropriate to edit out his links to poorly written, uninformative summaries that he posts on his blog before posting the story. I don't mind somebody occasionally using a Slashdot submission to let the community know about some new product they or their company has developed or interesting article or book they've written, but this blatant traffic farming is way over the top.

Re:Please stop

[GileadGreene]

I'll second that motion. The sheer quantity of Piquepaille articles is astounding - something like 1 every 2-3 days (does he give kickbacks to the /. eds?). And as you say, every single one includes links to his blog. At least Google has the courtesy to place the ads in a separate screen location, instead of embedding them directly in their "product".

Why is nanotechnology different from other fields?

[wass]

we haven't figured out a way to curb the serious abuses (i.e. the goo problem) that can occur with each new discovery in the field.

Please elaborate on the 'goo problem'. Ie, with explicit details on how it would work, not just some qualitative description, which is all that anybody seems to have at the moment.

So somebody said that maybe all life COULD be devoured by a properly-designed nanotech robot that would reproduce quickly and break up organic matter into component monomers, etc etc etc.

I'll say a self-aware self-replicating AI program COULD be created that would spread through the net independent of host operating system, and crash all airplanes, screw up everybody's bank accounts, erase all data, etc etc etc.

Similarly, a 'battlebot' with enough memory COULD somehow be programmed properly that it also attains self-awareness intelligence, reproduces and builds an army of subservient battlebots, and wreaks havoc across the planet.

So, if you are trying to claim we should stop research into nanotechnology, then we should also stop research into computing, artificial intelligence, robotics, etc.

There is NO field where there isn't any risk that something bad could happen. Nanotech is the 'new' field, so this is where the fear-mongering comes in. You're not alone, look at comics, for instance. Most old-school Marvel superheroes got their superpowers, for better or worse, through radioactive effects, back in the fearful decades after the atom bomb. Nowadays the current fear is nanotech, and even the first Spiderman movie changed the story from a radioactive spider to a genetically-modified spider. You're doing the same thing, really.

I work with nanotech. Just 30 minutes ago I was putting carbon nanotubes onto a substrate, and I'll eventually do some electronic transport measurements. Currently I'm scanning the substrate with an atomic-force microscope. There are TONS of amazing uses that nanotubes might have, so we're studying many of their properties. Why is my study of carbon nanotubes different from somebody determining which binary tree search algorithms are most efficient, or what shape sawblade cuts through plastic the best?

Re:Damaging Electric fields?

[francisew]

By damaging electric fields, I'd guess they mean what is used in capillary electrophoresis (Several kV are used to generate a 'zeta potential' which consists of the counterions on a glass surface moving in the electric field, and dragging water along with them). Such high voltages can have bad effects on large proteins and other things (like living cells) that you might want to move, but not electrocute (let alone boil, which happens if you crank up the voltage to make things move faster).

IAAC (I am an analytical chemist), and in my humble opinion this is interesting, but not immediately practical, not as expansive as the article suggests (surprise!).

• We could, for example:
• -make an analysis system that comprised a bunch of wires crossing at different points and force droplets of different chemicals to come together to react
• -to split individual droplets and move them around
• -or to simply interface lots and lots of different analysis techniques without having a million junctions that all get dirty and need to be cleaned.

Kudos to the researchers, and I want to get 10 yards of light-actuated water droplet moving wire once they have it :)

Francis