Friday, 18 May 2007 - 9:50 AM
208 (Pfahler Hall)
453

Manipulating liquids on tunable nanostructured surfaces

Tom Krupenkin, Alcatel-Lucent, Murray Hill, NJ

An ability to manipulate microscopic volumes of liquids with the high precision becomes increasingly important with the recent progress in micro- and nanofluidics and its rapid penetration in various industrial applications. Dynamic control over the interaction of liquids with the solid substrate constitutes a very important aspect of this problem. Nanostructured solid surfaces offer a promising way to achieve this goal. In this talk we discuss recently demonstrated dynamically tunable nanostructured surfaces. The behavior of these surfaces can be reversibly switched between superhydrophobic and hydrophilic states by the application of electrical voltage and current. The proposed approach potentially allows novel methods of manipulating microscopically small volumes of liquids. This includes almost frictionless liquid transport, the ability to selectively immobilize the droplets at any given time or position, as well as dynamic control over the penetration on liquids through the nanostructured layer. The obtained results potentially open new and exciting opportunities in microfluidics, optics, thermal management of microelectronics, chemical microreactors, bio/chemical detection, and many other areas

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