Water droplets have been made to do the seemingly impossible [video]

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39 pointsrespinal2 comments

This is so neat. If authors happen to be around:

* how persistent is the charge? Eg does it eventually reduce to neutral after some amount of drops? Or is the movement dependent on initial drop velocity?

* how mechanically robust is the surface?

* in the “pipette” demo you started with a drop, but that would imply you have to have already measured the droplet - are you able to control the lifting power sufficiently to pull up just the required amount?

It is! That can be used for so many applications like microfluidics (my research field). I am not one of the authors, but you can see their paper here (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-019-0440-2). They have more details there. They modified the surface chemically, “The superamphiphobic surface is made from fluorinated porous silicon dioxide.” You can see some details here (https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/gravity-defying-droplets...), but may need to sign up. If you can’t get that info, let me know.

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