Researchers at Bell Labs have discovered an entirely new method to control the behavior of tiny liquid droplets by applying electrical charges to specially engineered silicon surfaces that resemble blades of grass. The breakthrough technique makes silicon surfaces resemble a lawn of evenly cut grass, with individual “blades” only nanometers in size. Liquids interact with these surfaces in a novel way, thereby providing a way to precisely control their effects. The individual blades of the nanograss are so small that liquid droplets sit on top and can be easily maneuvered.
Lucent Technologies said the new technique of manipulating fluids has many potential applications, including thermal cooling of integrated circuits for powerful computers, novel photonic components for optical communications, and small, low-cost “lab-on-a-chip” sensor modules. In optical networking, for example, moving a droplet of fluid into a nanograss surface can alter the physical properties of the transmitting medium through which light signals are sent, and this may lead to better methods for optical switching. Novel optical components, such as filters, could be created by moving the fluid into and out of nanograss areas, according to the Bell Labs researchers. http://www.lucent.comhttp://www.bell-labs.com.
