So if you were like me you boiled some water this morning for fix of caffeine found in a cup of coffee. When man first boiled water for soups, pasta and later damn coffee he likely did not take care to really understand boiling. Man just wanted some coffee but did not take the time to look into the pot. Now that we have a little more time on our hands we can really take the time to look into the pot and see the boiling in action.
Boiling can be divided into two regimes: 1) Buoyancy dominated boiling 2) Surface tension dominated boiling. The buoyancy dominated boiling is the one found common on Earth. This is the one you see when boiling the water for your damn coffee. As the water is heated and vaporizes into a bubble the bubble grows and is held on the surface by surface tension forces. These push the bubble off the bottom of the pos so it rises out of the water. Liquid rushes behind the bubble works its way (through convective forces) and the boiling repeats until you get water for some damn coffee.
What happens in space? At lower gravity levels like in space the boiling behaviour is controlled more by surface tension dominated boiling. One single bubble covers a large portion of the heater surface. This could be a large bubble and its size is determined by the vaporization of the liquid, the smaller bubbles that feed it, condensation of vapor at the top of the bubble and lastly the surface tension of the liquid.
So the astronauts determined after several experiments that boiling water to make damn good coffee is different in space than it is on Earth. I wonder if the coffee tastes better?
If you buy an e-reader from Amazon in the near future you may be using a technology where surface tension properties are important. Amazon is thinking about buying a Samsung division called Liquavista for 100 million dollars. Liquavista (and some other companies) use a technology for their displays called electrowetting. This technology involves modifying the surface tension of liquids on a solid surface using a voltage. When a voltage is applied the hydrophobic surface can be modified making the surface more wettable. The voltage acts as a switch to make the surface more and less tense or more and less wettable when compared to the solid support. The electrowetting effect has been defined as "the change in solid-electrolytecontact angle due to an applied potential difference between the solid and the electrolyte". For reasons not known only a subset of materials are good for electrowetting. Amorphous fluoropolymers are the best currently.
How do they use this technology?
Liquavista uses this technology to make an optical switch by contracting a colored oil film electrically. When no voltage is applied the colored oil forms a continuous film and the color is visible to the user of the display. When a voltage is applied possibly with the touch of fingertip for touch screen displays the pixel becomes transparent. The different pixels can then align to show a photograph or video (video is ideal because of the high switching speed and small pixel dimensions).
Check out this video to see the speed at which it switches.
How is it different from other technology?
This technology is different than LCD (liquid crystal displays) since they use oil rather than a crystal to display color. One added advantage of the oil displays used by Liquavista are that they require less power likely because they do not need to be continually refreshed. Also they are in color so this is also different from E-Ink's product (that only use two tones to achieve the Kindle properties). According to the BBC, using electrowetting technology could allow for devices to be built that run for several days before needing a charge. So in essence it will have a battery lifetime like the Kindle but a colored picture like the current LCD diplays in the Iphone.
How to find new materials to use in electrowetting?
Using a high throughput surface tension device (Delta-8) coupled with a high throughput catalyst could really explore finding new materials with the right properties for electrowetting.
This is more a review of some of the things I have talked about in this blog before. However, with science and technology you have to reach a plateau before you start to see the technology in everybody's hands. I have also included which instruments that might be useful in developing these new technologies.
1. Superhydrophobic Coatings. I talked about the LiquiGlide product for use in making better ketchup bottles. Many people are working on these superhydrobobic coatings from Ross technologies (NeverWet) spray on coatings which can allow your shoes to maintain a spotless shine.
2. Superoleophobic Glass Coatings. I have two touchscreen devices that I use which are like my little hands (as they would say in Finland). Researchers are creating new ways to prevent people from getting all that grease on their touch devices after eating a bag of a full bag of ketchup chips.
3. Freaking Fracking. Decreasing interfacial tension to help improve fracking techniques. In order to get all the oil off the rocks better surfactants are needed to trap that residual oil. This will help reduce the number of chemicals used.
Kibron Delta-8 is used by petroleum companies to improve their surfactants for this.
4. Electrowetting, uses an electric field to change the properties of a fluid (usually fluoropolymer). This technology will be likely used in the successors to e-readers. These are currently being developed.
5. Graphene and Nanomaterials. If you have been living in a box you should likely stay there. Graphene is changing the world from making better display screens, integrated circuits and solar cells. If you emerge from the box the world will have transformed to something extraordinary.
Kibron DeltaPi and MTX are already used at Universities for making better graphene systems.
6. Battery design. The Energizer Bunny likely did not have any say in this. Batteries are changing. They are being printed on shirts even. Surface tension can aid in making better materials and printing.
7. 3-D Printing Fused deposition modeling involves The model or part is produced by extruding small beads of thermoplastic material to form layers as the material hardens immediately after extrusion from the nozzle. These beads or colloids need to have specific surface tension properties in order for them to flow better out of the print nozzle and build the respective material.
Kibron EZ-Pi Plus would be a good solution to figuring out the surface tension of the outgoing fluid.
8. Improved solar power. New methods and materials are being used to design and build ultra-efficient solar panels. Superhydrophic coatings and films, for example, contribute to self-cleaning panel designs. New designs include solar shingles and local solar grids for developing countries. Companies at the cutting edge of solar power development include Semprius and SunPower.
Kibron's AquaPi and EZ-Pi Plus has helped in both for the wet leakage test and for the
9. The development of biomaterials. The wetting behavior help to determine biocompatibility with living tissue for contact lenses, and heart devices heart devices for example. Kibron's users from the Center for Materials have created several different materials that could be used in biomaterials using the Kibron Delta-8.
Surface tension is still fun for the two year old child to 80 year old men and from a kid exploring surface tension with a paperclip in a elementary school classroom to an astronaut physicist exploring water spheres in space. The cohesion power of water is a very curious thing to study. It is always nice to see people to use water properties in fantasy or comic books, and win science fairs or engineering awards. So go ahead, write about surface tension and experiment with surface tension where ever you are.
With a camera recording 24 frames per-second and a speaker that generates a 24 hz sine wave along with water that has a surface tension of 72 dynes magic happens. via BoingBoing & Koshi!)
Friction may seem trivial when you are for example rubbing your head on the carpet but understanding how the molecules interact during friction just recently described. Friction seems to be comparable when working with fluids. For example if you have two viscous oils that are flowing along each other this movement will transform into heat. This energy is usually wasted in the process so making fluids that have less friction is always sought after. Likely, the French researchers in this article were rubbing their head on the carpet when they thought of this article. Potentially, some marbles were placed between their head and the carpet to make less friction. In our analogy if you replace marbles with say superhydrophobic beads you may be able to reduce the friction involved in this.
'Two liquids in contact cannot usually slide by each other at all, because their molecules are in intimate contact. But in Physical Review Letters, a French team suggests that this motion can be lubricated by placing tiny beads at the liquids’ interface, to act as ball bearings. If the concept can be achieved in experiments, it could provide new flexibility in manipulating fluid flow.
In recent years, researchers have created “superhydrophobic” surfaces that use arrays of tiny raised pillars to allow water to flow with very low friction. First, the surface of each pillar is hydrophobic, like wax, so water “beads up” on it. But in addition, the collection of pillars is much more hydrophobic than a flat hydrophobic surface would be, because the liquid bridges across the tops of the closely-spaced pillars and slides as if on an air cushion.... The fluids would remain separated because the spheres would be hydrophobic, and surface tension would maintain an air gap in the regions between the spheres.'
Direct link:
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/28
www.kibron.com (Your number one choice for understanding surface chemistry)
Understanding of surface science is important. As I have written this blog I have found that people have actually read it and even more so that I can actually write creatively on this subject. After a couple of years I have learned that there are a kids out there learning about surface science and winning science fairs. Many of these are girls. As an uncle of three awesome exploration driven nieces I would love them to learn more about surface chemistry. Not only will it enhance their understanding of the world, they could also invent something really really awesome.
As it is International Women's Day I found (inspired from this article) three inventions made by women who knew a little something about surface chemistry and had a chance to exploit this understanding it to make an interesting discovery. The first one started it all and today many more women are making strides in surface science.
Agnes Pockels
Understood Surface Tension
When most people wash dishes they likely only see that the dish is clean, some bubbles or something else. However, when Agnes Pockels was washing dishes she discovered the influence of impurities on the surface tension of fluids (likely from the Wiener Snitzel that Austrian's love). So she set out to measure the surface tension of these impurities in comparison to the soap molecules already present on the surface of the water. She invented the Pockels trough which was a precursor to the Langmuir scale and published the first stearine acid. To measure the tension she developed the Pockels trough,
precursor to the Langmuir scale, and published the first stearine acid.
With the little help from a very famous physicist, Lord Raleigh, she published her first paper called Surface Tension in a little magazine (one of the top journals) called Nature. With this paper and several more she got an award from the Colloid Society and an honorary PhD from Technical University of Brunswick. Not bad for learning something from in the kitchen.
Katherine Blodgett
Developed World's First Non-Reflective Glass
In 1920, mathematician Katherine Blodgett became the first woman hired by General Electric's Research Lab in Schenectady, New York. She began as an assistant to Nobel Prize-winning chemist Irving Langmuir, and then eventually pursued her own work, studying methods of spreading monomolecular coatings onto glass and metal. In 1935, Blodgett succeeded in developing the world's first non-reflective glass (U.S patent
#2,220,660 on March 16, 1938 for the "Film Structure and Method of Preparation"
or invisible, nonreflective glass). At Irving Langmuirs persistence she would also go on to become the first woman to receive a Ph.D in Physics from Cambridge University.
Note: it is great that Irving Langmuir mentored her. We need more people like this!
Patsy O'Connell Sherman
Invented Scotchgard
Sometimes the best inventions are accidents. While working as a chemist at the 3M Company, Minnesota native Patsy O'Connell Sherman. In the lab, a chemical spilled on an assistant's canvas sneaker. Likely this would have absorbed into the sneaker if it was a normal liquid. Repeated attempts to remove the stain were unsuccessful, Sherman noticed that the chemical repelled water, oil and other liquids. Maybe most guys might overlook this but possibly Patsy had a keen attention to detail. She was fascinated by the protective quality of the chemical and with a colleague she would go on to create Scotchguard, one of the best-known stain repellants in the world.
People started their understanding of films since Pliny the great. In a scientific format the film's understanding is largely in descenting order Benjamin Franklin, Agnes Pockels with Lord Raleigh, Padday & DuNuöy and then finally Langmuir & Blodgett. The latter construction of the instruments are the design that many of today's instrument's are based. Several people who have worked with Langmuir Blodgett Films have also won Nobel prizes with Lord Raleigh (not for thin films) in 1904 and Langmuir winning the elusive price in 1938. Langmuir is presented above in Time for being one of three to discover fake snow. The prize is intended to be for people that can make a great contribution to science for the future. Scientists are always standing on the shoulders of other scientists. However, likely when Langmuir developed this technique he did not know what people might use it for in the future. Here are awesome technologies that are brought to you from working with Langmuir films: 1) LB films can be used as passive layers in MIS (metal-insulator-semiconductor) which have more open structure than silicon oxide and they allow gases to penetrate to the interface more easily and have obvious effects. This is the case for Zinc Oxide. Example: Enhanced Photoluminescence of ZnO Langmuir–Blodgett Films on Gold-Coated Substrates by Plasmonic Coupling They use a Kibron Microtrough to make the films.
2) LB films also can be used as biological membranes. Lipid molecules with the fatty and polar regions have received extended attention because of being adequately suited to the Langmuir method. This kind of biological membranes can be investigated in the mode of drug action or potentially toxins to understand the chemistry of biologically active molecules, and helps develop an overall model for the biological system. Example: A Lipid-Specific Toxin Reveals Heterogeneity of Sphingomyelin-Containing Membranes They use the Delta-Pi to understand that the specific toxin, Lynenin, binds at the air water interface.
This toxin is penetrating the surface
B. Also, it is possible to propose field effect devise for observing the immunological response, enzyme-substrate reactions and binding of virus particles to the membrane by collecting biological molecules such as antibodies and enzymes and putting them onto films insulating LB films. Example:Identification of a Common Sphingolipid-binding Domain in Alzheimer, Prion, and HIV-1 Proteins They use the Kibron Microtrough to observe the peptide's penetration at different surface pressure. Better drugs for Alzheimer's and HIV. For sure! 3. Application to glass and make antireflecting but at the same time allowing 99% of visible light to pass through. Example: The guys from AMOLF and Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research are developing new molecular techniques to make things like antireflective coatings. This is presented in the long titled paper: Comparative Study of Direct and Phase-Specific Vibrational Sum-Frequency Generation Spectroscopy: Advantages and Limitations. Here they use the Kibron Microtrough. This has everything do with your compact disks and technology in general.
4. Biosensors like the glucose biosensor – use of poly(3-hexyl thiopene) as Langmuir–Blodgett film, which entraps glucose-oxide and transfers it to a coated indium-tin-oxide glass plate. Other biosensor for making better diagnostics are also developed using the Langmuir films. Example:Langmuir and Langmuir−Blodgett Films of Organophosphorus Acid Anhydrolase 5.Langmuir–Blodgett films are inherently 2D-structures and can be built up, layer by layer, by dipping hydrophobic or hydrophilic substrates into a liquid subphase. Langmuir–Blodgett patterning is a new paradigm for large-area patterning with mesostructured features. Using this technique for developing new materials like graphene would benefit the world. Example: Poly(lactic acid)/Graphene Nanocomposites Prepared via Solution Blending Using Chloroform as a Mutual Solvent. A better lighter fuel efficient rocket perhaps.... So if you buy a Langmuir-Blodgett instrument or a Langmuir Film instrument from a manufacturer like Kibron you can try to unravel a lot of the world's puzzles at the tip of your fingers or likely on the surface of the subphase.
An Alaskan, Quoc Truong, made new textile for American soldiers to wear so they don't have to wash (not sure if they were doing that anyway). The fabric is similar to a lotus leave and serves the same purpose. It is superhydrobobic and gives the surface of the clothing a lower surface energy to give a high contact angle when an aqueous substance is applied is high and rolls off preventing dirt from accumulating.
Having this kind of material would have helped Bruno not to wash his fashionable army uniform with the Dolce & Gabbana belt (which will ruin the fabric, it needs to be dry cleaned, 'Hello'). You can see it in this scene.
The fabric Truong helped create has a special durable, super-repellent coating with "dual micro- and nano-size architecture." When this special coating is applied onto clothing, it will give the surface of the clothing a low critical surface energy, or surface tension. When this surface tension is lower than that of the surface tensions of harmful, toxic liquid chemicals, the toxic chemicals would roll off the fabric on contact. Additionally, fabrics that are coated with this special super-repellent coating showed minimal to no attraction to dust and dirt. - See more at: http://alaska-native-news.com/general-news/7897-self-cleaning-clothing-wear-without-wear.html#sthash.yMRRndKh.dpuf
The fabric Truong helped create has a special durable, super-repellent coating with "dual micro- and nano-size architecture." When this special coating is applied onto clothing, it will give the surface of the clothing a low critical surface energy, or surface tension. When this surface tension is lower than that of the surface tensions of harmful, toxic liquid chemicals, the toxic chemicals would roll off the fabric on contact. Additionally, fabrics that are coated with this special super-repellent coating showed minimal to no attraction to dust and dirt. - See more at: http://alaska-native-news.com/general-news/7897-self-cleaning-clothing-wear-without-wear.html#sthash.yMRRndKh.dpuf
The fabric Truong helped create has a special durable, super-repellent coating with "dual micro- and nano-size architecture." When this special coating is applied onto clothing, it will give the surface of the clothing a low critical surface energy, or surface tension. When this surface tension is lower than that of the surface tensions of harmful, toxic liquid chemicals, the toxic chemicals would roll off the fabric on contact. Additionally, fabrics that are coated with this special super-repellent coating showed minimal to no attraction to dust and dirt. - See more at: http://alaska-native-news.com/general-news/7897-self-cleaning-clothing-wear-without-wear.html#sthash.yMRRndKh.dpuf
The fabric Truong helped create has a special durable, super-repellent coating with "dual micro- and nano-size architecture." When this special coating is applied onto clothing, it will give the surface of the clothing a low critical surface energy, or surface tension. When this surface tension is lower than that of the surface tensions of harmful, toxic liquid chemicals, the toxic chemicals would roll off the fabric on contact. Additionally, fabrics that are coated with this special super-repellent coating showed minimal to no attraction to dust and dirt. - See more at: http://alaska-native-news.com/general-news/7897-self-cleaning-clothing-wear-without-wear.html#sthash.yMRRndKh.dpuf
The fabric Truong helped create has a special durable, super-repellent coating with "dual micro- and nano-size architecture." When this special coating is applied onto clothing, it will give the surface of the clothing a low critical surface energy, or surface tension. When this surface tension is lower than that of the surface tensions of harmful, toxic liquid chemicals, the toxic chemicals would roll off the fabric on contact. Additionally, fabrics that are coated with this special super-repellent coating showed minimal to no attraction to dust and dirt. - See more at: http://alaska-native-news.com/general-news/7897-self-cleaning-clothing-wear-without-wear.html#sthash.yMRRndKh.dpuf
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