Latest Intermolecular forces Stories

Park Systems, world leader in atomic force microscopy (AFM) for the semiconductor and hard disk markets, introduces Park NX20, an enhanced design of the already successful XE series that assures the highest level of precision for roughness measurement and defect review. Park NX20 is designed to guarantee reliable, reproducible results for better output in failure analysis (FA) and quality assurance (QA) laboratories. Santa Clara, CA (PRWEB) May 10, 2013 Park Systems, world leader in...

Columbia University Nanoscale technology used to drive a 'big' C60 through a 'small' H2O may help drug delivery Columbia Engineering researchers have developed a technique to isolate a single water molecule inside a buckyball, or C60, and to drive motion of the so-called "big" nonpolar ball through the encapsulated "small" polar H2O molecule, a controlling transport mechanism in a nanochannel under an external electric field. They expect this method will lead to an array of new...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A spritz of dew drops is all the cicadas on the East Coast need to keep their wings fresh and clean as they emerge from their 17-year slumber. A research team from the universities of Duke and James Cook revealed dew drops are beneficial not only in cleaning cicada wings, but other water-repellant, or superhydrophobic, surfaces as well. Dew drops “jump” by themselves on such surfaces, carrying away contaminants. Chuan-Hua...

For more than 20 years, researchers have been using atomic force microscopy (AFM) to measure and characterize materials at the nanometer scale. However AFM-based measurements of chemistry and chemical properties of materials were generally not possible, until now. Researchers at the University Illinois report that they have measured the chemical properties of polymer nanostructures as small as 15 nm, using a novel technique called atomic force microscope infrared spectroscopy (AFM-IR). The...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online For all those who worried back in 2004 that the sky was falling because the original model of the molecular structure of water toppled out, have no fear, because things can go back to the way they used to be. Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) researchers confirmed the original tetrahedral model, after an international research group challenged the model nine-years ago, claiming that water molecules form bonds only with two...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Surfaces that can shed water and survive harsh environments could have broad applications in a wide range of industries including energy, water, transportation, construction and medicine. The condensation of water is an integral part of many industrial processes, for example, and most electric power plants and desalination plants have condensers. Materials that prevent water from spreading over a surface – hydrophobic materials -...

Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Water repelling molecules are said to be hydrophobic. The hydration – or formation of water interfaces around hydrophobic molecules – is important for many biological processes: protein folding, membrane formation, transport of proteins across an interface, the transmission of action potentials across membranes. It is involved as well in the process of creating mayonnaise, or in the fact that you can get rid of fat with soap. Hydrophobic...

The wetting model is a classical problem in surface science and biomimetic science. Professor LIU Jianlin and his collaborators from China University of Petroleum, Wuhan University and Fourth Military Medical University approached this old and classical problem from a new direction. They stressed that it is the triple contact line and not the contact area of the droplet/solid interface that determines the macroscopic contact angle. The proposed continuum model, termed the mechanism-based...

Jedidiah Becker for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Color is all around us - from painted buildings, to stop signs, to butterfly wings. Traditionally, colorful compounds, called pigments, are added to material to give them the desired color. However, color can often fade and is susceptible to damage from environmental conditions, like rain. A more novel way to create color is to synthesize polymers to create surface types and colors for specific applications. However, creating such...

Jedidiah Becker for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Read my exclusive interview with Professor Shu Yang about her research. Have you ever looked at a peacock’s feathers, a butterfly’s wing or an oily puddle on the road and wondered why they have those shimmering, vibrant colors? Unlike the colors you see in spring grass, an animals’ fur or fading autumn leaves, these iridescent hues are not the result of pigmentation but rather of a naturally occurring phenomenon known as...