Moving Water Molecules By Light
Roland Piquepaille writes "An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Arizona State University (ASU) has discovered a new nanotechnology effect, the ability of moving water molecules by light. This is a far better way than current methods such as damaging electric fields and opens the way to a new class of microfluidic devices used in analytical chemistry and for pharmaceutical research. For example, this makes possible to design a device that can move drugs dissolved in water, or droplets of water and samples that need to be tested for environmental or biochemical analyses. Please read this overview for more details and references, plus an image of two water drops illuminated with a fluorescent dye and sitting respectively on a nanowire surface and on a flat surface."
August 12th, 2004 at 8:37 AM
"Opto-synthesis?"
I was thinking, perhaps it might be possible to use nano-lithography to create a nano-laser. Since light has momentum, such a laser could arrange individual atoms and molecules to perform bottom-up "opto-synthesis." Also, it could break both inter and intra-molecular bonds. For example, such a laser could take carbon dioxide and water molecules, break them up into individual atoms, then position each atom to create sugar, cellulose, diamond, a nanofactory with many such nano-lasers, and so on. Because such a device could be a semi-conductor device, it could be created using current or near-future lithography, making it easier to bootstrap MNT.
August 12th, 2004 at 9:08 AM
Webpage
There's a webpage about something kind of similar: http://www.iase.cc/optical.htm
October 26th, 2004 at 9:16 PM
First Replicator?
I remember a story a few years ago where light streams were used to redirect matter streams with relatively good precision.
The article implied this might one day lead to replicators (like those on Star Trek) where matter streams could be used to build a physical object.
Granted, the technology is in its infancy, but the fact that we are even that far along is quite amazing (considering the first airplane was built just a century ago).