Janus Particles as Body Submarines?

Roland Piquepaille writes "Janus particles, which take their name from a Roman god with two faces, are microscopic 'two-faced' spheres whose halves are physically or chemically different. Now, U.S. researchers have shown that some of these Janus microparticles can move like stealthy submarines when an alternating electrical field is applied to liquid surrounding them. This could lead to new kinds of self-propelling microsensors or means of targeted drug delivery."

Comments

Finally!

[jovius]

Two faced particles that stealthy move in a liquid. Pick up any government, and you can make the same observation. I wonder if the findings of the research team are applicable to macroscopic solutions?

Re:Medical use?!

[pimpimpim]

Indeed, or the scheme to do the steering of such microamp fields through your body would be so damned complicated that developing this system would be either impossible or overly expensive. And at that point you still haven't thought of a decent take-up mechanism. As I said before, I am ok with Roland Piquepaille giving a shot on popular science articles, but please add some well-thought-through criticism to the PR shit that comes from universities. "Submarine" in-body medicine has been a dream since Asimov wrote about it, but please stop the unreasonable extrapolations from any nano-particle to a submarine that can save us from cancer LOL OMG!

In the mean time that these people are looking for a problem that fits their solution, a lot of REAL scientific innovation has been going on, e.g. microsensorics and subcutaneous pumps to help diabetes patients in a life-improving way.

Re:Soap?

[Schiphol]

Soap molecules are not spherical, really. They are more of like a match, with a lipophobic head and a lipophile body. Now, when they help dissolve fat in water, a number of molecules tend to form spheres, leaving the fat inside, This phenomenon has been exploited for ages to, ehm, wash dishes and the like. Also, a more sophisticated version of this idea has also been around for quite some time: liposomes.

The idea behind TFA is using spheres with two halves. Sort of a dipole that may move around under the effect of an electric field (if I got it right).

Re:Cut the jibba jabba!

[rbanffy]

Actually, the part that deserved the informative mod is the one that said that everyone knew that. I had no idea, before reading the post, that so many people knew about anisotropic particles and unbalanced liquid flows caused by electric fields applied to aqueous suspensions of them. ;-P