Ivan Seeking
Mar16-04, 07:44 PM
With possible applications in everything from microscopic plumbing to slick boat hulls to switches for optical networks, a new chameleonic material developed at Bell Labs sheds water droplets like a newly waxed sports car, but, at the flick of a switch, turns absorbent like a "quicker picker upper" paper towel.
Depending on the chemical structure of a solid, water and other liquids either cling to it — making it wet — or it repels them. Usually a surface is absorbent or repellent, but not both.
"What we're trying to do is make a surface which you can control on the fly," said Dr. Tom N. Krupenkin, a scientist at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs who led the research. "If you can change that on the fly, it opens up applications everywhere."
Writing in an article that will appear May 11 in the chemistry journal Langmuir, Dr. Krupenkin and his collaborators at Bell Labs and the University of Pennsylvania describe carving a microscopic bed of nails out of a piece of silicon. Bell Labs, using a more bucolic metaphor, calls it "nanograss."[continued]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/16/science/16NANO.html?ex=1394773200&en=03f7bd7719daf16a&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
Depending on the chemical structure of a solid, water and other liquids either cling to it — making it wet — or it repels them. Usually a surface is absorbent or repellent, but not both.
"What we're trying to do is make a surface which you can control on the fly," said Dr. Tom N. Krupenkin, a scientist at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs who led the research. "If you can change that on the fly, it opens up applications everywhere."
Writing in an article that will appear May 11 in the chemistry journal Langmuir, Dr. Krupenkin and his collaborators at Bell Labs and the University of Pennsylvania describe carving a microscopic bed of nails out of a piece of silicon. Bell Labs, using a more bucolic metaphor, calls it "nanograss."[continued]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/16/science/16NANO.html?ex=1394773200&en=03f7bd7719daf16a&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND