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Open microfluidic and nanofluidic systems

the nanoregime. As one reaches a channel width of about 30 nanometer, one theoretically expects new effects arising from the line tension of the contact line, but such nanochannels have not been studied experimentally so far.

The new PNAS study provides an instructive example for the close relation between basic research and technological development in the micro- and nanoregime: open systems with directly accessible surface channels can be used for micro- and nanofluidic applications but only if one carefully matches the channel geometry with the substrate wettability. This constraint is a direct consequence of the strong capillary forces that dominate in the micro- and nanoregime and can be formulated in a quantitative way using the methods of theoretical physics. In general, the development of any new technology requires a systematic understanding of the underlying physics. This latter constraint applies to all length scales: if one wanted to build a robot which walks over water, for instance, a human-like robot is a bad idea while a spider-like robot is a much better choice.

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Original work:

Ralf Seemann, Martin Brinkmann, Edward J. Kramer, Frederick F. Lange, Reinhard Lipowsky Wetting morphologies at microstructured surfaces PNAS 102, 1848-1852, February 8, 2005, 10.1073/pnas.0407721102


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Source:Max-Planck-Gesellschaft


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