New Chip Can Identify Liquids, Encode Messages

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have developed a porous chip that can identify liquids instantaneously. Each liquid's distinct surface tension determines how much it seeps into the pores of the chip, which the chip uses to tell liquids apart. The researchers also decorated the chip with a secret message (ie, brand name) that only shows up when certain liquids are applied. The chip is so sensitive it can distinguish gasolines with varying proportions of ethanol, and could help clean-up crews identify spills in the field."

Comments

Awesome chips

[PoolOfThought]

So now my ruffles will know if I'm eating them with white cheese dip or nacho cheese dip. Nice!

Re:Awesome chips

[outsider007]

Yes but they'll also know when you've double dipped.

Interesting applications for ethanol

[DanTheStone]

What would be truly interesting is if we the common people could check the percentage of ethanol when we fill up our gas tanks, or have it monitored within our gas tanks. Being able to tell at fill-up would actually tell you which gas station gives better gas. My money's on the chips being prohibitively expensive, though.

Re:Interesting applications for ethanol

[espiesp]

Flex Fuel vehicles already monitor this with a fuel composition sensor. It measures Ethanol content from 0-100% with a variable frequency between 50-150Hz, and Fuel temp with a pulse-width between 1 and 5ms.

Too bad it costs at least $400 or it'd be fun to play with.

Weird Use of the Word, "Chip"

[BJ_Covert_Action]

So, I clicked through TFA and the link to the paper contained within. I'm not sure why Discover refers to this piece of hardware as a 'chip.' It doesn't appear to be an electronic chip of any sort. It looks like the information about what liquid the material is dipped in is derived from studying the patterns of 'wetness' within the material's structure. But I don't see any mention of how this information would be communicated via some electrical signal to a microprocessor or other circuitry. Perhaps I am thinking in a limited context, but it seems like this material's usefulness as a sensor is still very limited.

Am I missing something?

Re:Weird Use of the Word, "Chip"

[dgatwood]

If it is really just a case of visual inspection, then I suspect that this device + CCD + software = viable electronic sensor.

Re:Weird Use of the Word, "Chip"

[hyperquantization]

...but it seems like this material's usefulness as a sensor is still very limited.

If you can see it, so can an electric circuit. You see, there are these fancy things called photodiodes... I mock, but in all seriousness, if you can map a measurable physical state to an unmeasurable physical state, then you might as well just skip the step and say, in this situation, something like "liquid chemical composition is measurable." The form the measurable information takes is irrelevant relative to the ability to measure it.

Re:Weird Use of the Word, "Chip"

[Samantha Wright]

The term is also widely-used for microarrays and other micro-labs. Many of them are actually fabricated in silicon or other media like integrated circuits—the rectangle cut out of silicon wafer being the chip proper!

Surface tension sensor, not liquid determiner

[Dthief]

From the images it seems to not be that good at identification, unless I am not understanding it seems like it just gives a surface tension value.

In the case shown adding water to ethanol changes the reaction, however, mixes of water-ethanol would have the same surface tension as some other liquids, so how do you distinguish those, lets say acetone which is just a hair higher (in terms of S.T.) than ethanol vs ethanol+1%(or whatever makes it even) water

Re:Two nations divided by a common language

[artor3]

I'm pretty sure that relations between the US and Great Britain have been worse at certain points in history. If you think really hard, I'm sure that you can come up with a few examples.