Our PhD students Javier Escobar and Juan Molina have been able to control the transport of extremely small amounts of liquids, in the order of zeptoliters (1 zL = 10-21 L), when these flow along resonant nanofluidic channels.
Álvaro San Paulo, responsible for the work, explains: “What we have achieved is to measure with precision how much liquid is transfered to the surface of nanowires with a length and a diameter of around 50 micrometers and 200 nanometers, respectively, in response to an electric tension of a few volts”. This task was one of the main goals of Liquidmass ERC project (https://ercliquidmass.eu/), coordinated by Montserrat Calleja, who is also responsible for this work: “The precise quantitative mass flow control developed here could allow to detect the mass of a single nanoparticle transported by the liquid, and we are exploring this idea for the detection of viruses”.
For more information:
https://www.csic.es/es/actualidad-del-csic/una-tecnologia-del-csic-logra-regular-el-transporte-de-liquidos-escala
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.3c04020?fig=fig1&ref=pdf
