clhs sciblog

Scientists can now easily do what nature cannot do as easily: Move water uphill. It uses a laser that uses a flash of light, a ferntosecond long (It is to a second as a second is to 32 million years), to change the metal’s surface. The moving of water is done by using evaporation and molecular attraction, as well as laser etched channels. It changes the way the molecules of water and molecules of the metal react. Its creator, Chunlei Guo, a professor at the University of Rochester, sums it up what happens nicely, “Imagine a huge waterway system shrunk down onto a tiny chip, like the electronic circuit printed on a microprocessor, so we can perform chemical or biological work with a tiny bit of liquid.” You can read the full article here.

I believe that this is something that can have a huge variety of uses, as its creator alludes to. In the article, he gives the example of not having to draw a lot of blood with the laser, a scratches worth could work. This is just one of many examples. It looks like you could change the design so that it would work with etching circuits on microchips, creating more memory. The team has also made a laser that would make a metal hydrophobic. This lasor appears to be versatile enough to have many uses, and scientists will be able to use that versatility.