Science
Researchers create the most water-repellent surface ever
A revised method to create hydrophobic surfaces has implications for any technology where water meets a solid surface, from optics and microfluidics to cooking
« Researchers create the most water-repellent surface ever Image Credit: Ekaterina Osmekhina/Aalto University
Newswise — Researchers have developed a new mechanism to make water droplets slip off surfaces, described in a paper published in Nature Chemistry. The discovery challenges existing ideas about friction between solid surfaces and water and opens up a new avenue for studying droplet slipperiness at the molecular level. The new technique has applications in a range of fields, including plumbing, optics, and the auto and maritime industries.
All around us, water is always interacting with solid surfaces. Cooking, transportation, optics and hundreds of other technologies are affected by how water sticks to surfaces or slides off them. Understanding the molecular dynamics of these microscopic droplets helps scientists and engineers find ways to improve many household and industrial technologies.
Liquid-like surfaces are a new type of droplet-repellent surface that offer many technical benefits over traditional approaches—a topic recently reviewed in Nature Reviews Chemistry by Aalto University professor Robin Ras. They have molecular layers that are highly mobile yet covalently tethered to the substrate, giving solid surfaces a liquid-like quality that acts like a layer of lubricant between the water droplets and the surface itself. A research team led by Ras used a specially-designed reactor to create a liquid-like layer of molecules, called self-assembled monolayers (SAMs), on top of a silicon surface.
Watching self-assembled monolayers grow
‘Our work is the first time that anyone has gone directly to the nanometer-level to create molecularly heterogenous surfaces,’ says doctoral researcher Sakari Lepikko, lead author of the study.
By carefully adjusting conditions such as temperature and water content inside the reactor, the team could fine-tune how much of the silicon surface the monolayer covered.
‘I find it very exciting that by integrating the reactor with an ellipsometer, that we can watch the self-assembled monolayers grow with extraordinary level of detail,’ says Ras.
‘The results showed more slipperiness when SAM coverage was low or high, which are also the situations when the surface is most homogeneous. At low coverage, the silicon surface is the most prevalent component, and at high, SAMs are the most prevalent.’
‘It was counterintuitive that even low coverage yielded exceptional slipperiness,’ Lepikko continues.
At low coverage, the water becomes a film over the surface, which had been thought to increase the amount of friction. ‘We found that, instead, water flows freely between the molecules of the SAM at low SAM coverage, sliding off the surface. And when the SAM coverage is high, the water stays on top of the SAM and slides off just as easily. It’s only in between these two states that water adheres to the SAMs and sticks to the surface.”
The new method proved exceptionally effective, as the team created the slipperiest liquid surface in the world.
Anti-fogging, de-icing, self-cleaning
The discovery promises to have implications wherever droplet-repellent surfaces are needed. According to Lepikko, this covers hundreds of examples from daily life to industrial solutions.
‘Things like heat transfer in pipes, de-icing and anti-fogging are potential uses. It will also help with microfluidics, where tiny droplets need to be moved around smoothly, and with creating self-cleaning surfaces. Our counterintuitive mechanism is a new way to increase droplet mobility anywhere it’s needed,’ Lepikko says.
Next, the team plans to continue experimenting with their self-assembling monolayer setup and improve the layer itself. Lepikko is particularly excited about the information this work has provided for future innovations.
‘The main issue with a SAM coating is that it’s very thin, and so it disperses easily after physical contact. But studying them gives us fundamental scientific knowledge which we can use to create durable practical applications.’
The research used the national research infrastructure OtaNano was carried out by the Soft Matter and Wetting group at the Department of Applied Physics, which has also produced other pioneering water-repellent materials.
Researchers from the University of Jyväskylä also contributed to this study.
Source: Aalto University
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Hello fellow star gazers! 🌌 As an amateur astronomer and night sky enthusiast, I’m beyond excited to share that Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS)—the most talked-about comet of 2024—is already gracing our skies! Right now, observers in the Southern Hemisphere are enjoying its brilliance, and it won’t be long before us in the Northern Hemisphere can join in on the excitement. So grab your binoculars and stargazing apps, because tonight could be your chance to catch this spectacular cosmic visitor!
What Makes C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) So Special?
Let’s dive into why this comet is capturing the imagination of so many. To begin with, C/2023 A3 is expected to be exceptionally bright. While its future brightness is still a work in progress (thanks to the unpredictable nature of comets), most sources agree that we might see it with the naked eye. If we’re lucky, it could even outshine the iconic Comet NEOWISE from the summer of 2020. Hasn’t it been a while since we’ve seen a comet this remarkable?
Additionally, C/2023 A3 is anticipated to develop an awe-inspiring cometary tail. After it swings past the Sun at a distance similar to Mercury’s orbit, the heat will cause its icy core to evaporate dramatically, leading to the formation of an impressive tail made of dust and gas. If history teaches us anything, it’s that comets heated by the Sun often exhibit the most striking tails.
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, this is particularly exciting! The last time we saw such a bright comet visible from northern latitudes was during the 1997 spectacle of Comet Hale-Bopp.
How to Spot C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) in the Night Sky
Curious about how you can locate this celestial beauty? The Star Walk 2 app is your best friend! Here’s a quick guide to help you find it:
- Download and open the Star Walk 2 app.
- Tap the magnifier icon located at the bottom left of the screen.
- Type in “C/2023 A3” and select the relevant search result.
- Hold your device up to the sky, and the app will point you directly to the comet’s current position!
Is C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) Visible Now?
Good news for those in the Southern Hemisphere! Currently, C/2023 A3 is visible in the mornings, appearing low in the eastern sky just before sunrise. With a current magnitude of about 2.6, it’s brighter than anticipated and continues to brighten daily.
If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, the comet is a bit more challenging to see due to the Sun’s brightness; however, it’ll start becoming visible in early October.
Visibility Forecast: What Lies Ahead
Let’s paint a picture of what to expect in the coming weeks:
- September 27 – October 2: This is when the comet reaches perihelion, appearing in the early morning sky.
- October 10-12: The comet will become more visible in the evening, shortly after sunset, in the constellation Virgo. These dates are critical as it will be at its brightest around October 12, making it easier to see with the naked eye.
- October 15-31: The comet will fade but will still be visible with binoculars and telescopes.
The best time for observation is likely from October 10-12, just after sunset. So get out there—don’t miss the chance to witness this celestial wonder!
Tips for Photographing C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS)
If you’re an aspiring astrophotographer like me and you want to capture this comet on film, consider following these steps:
- Gear up: Have a DSLR or mirrorless camera, sturdy tripod, and a wide-angle or zoom lens ready.
- Camera Settings: Use manual mode with an ISO setting between 400 and 800, and a wide aperture of f/2.8 to f/4 to let in enough light.
- Location Matters: Pick a dark spot far from city lights. Star Walk 2 can help you find the comet’s exact location.
- Take Multiple Shots: For detailed images, take a series of photographs and use software like DeepSkyStacker for stacking.
- Post-processing: Tools like Photoshop will help refine your final image.
The Journey Ahead: What’s Next for C/2023 A3?
As we all wait in eager anticipation, it’s worth noting that C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is on a long journey. It completes one orbit around the Sun roughly every 80,660 years! If you’re wondering what the future holds, after its approach in October, this comet will slowly fade from view and won’t return until the year 26,000.
To Wrap Up
Excitement is in the air as we prepare to welcome this spectacular comet! C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is already putting on a show for observers in the Southern Hemisphere, and soon it will light up the skies for us in the North. As we gear up for this enchanting astronomical event, don’t forget to download the Star Walk 2 app to help you navigate the night sky like a pro.
Let’s get ready to bask in the glow of C/2023 A3—happy stargazing, everyone! 🌠
Useful References
https://vitotechnology.com/apps/star-walk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2023_A3_(Tsuchinshan%E2%80%93ATLAS)
https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/comet-c-2023-a3-tsuchinshan-atlas
The science section of our news blog STM Daily News provides readers with captivating and up-to-date information on the latest scientific discoveries, breakthroughs, and innovations across various fields. We offer engaging and accessible content, ensuring that readers with different levels of scientific knowledge can stay informed. Whether it’s exploring advancements in medicine, astronomy, technology, or environmental sciences, our science section strives to shed light on the intriguing world of scientific exploration and its profound impact on our daily lives. From thought-provoking articles to informative interviews with experts in the field, STM Daily News Science offers a harmonious blend of factual reporting, analysis, and exploration, making it a go-to source for science enthusiasts and curious minds alike. https://stmdailynews.com/category/science/
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The Earth
Rare Florida fossil finally ends debate about how porcupine jaws and tails evolved
A nearly complete fossil of an extinct North American porcupine helped resolve a debate on its ancestors’ evolution, revealing distinct traits developed recently.
Natasha S. Vitek, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)
A rare, nearly complete fossil of an extinct North American porcupine helped me and my colleagues solve a decades-long debate about how the modern North American porcupine evolved from its ancestors.
Published in Current Biology, our paper argues that North American porcupine ancestors may well date back 10 million years, but they wouldn’t be recognizable until about 8 million years later.
By comparing the bone structure of porcupines across North America and South America, we determined that for those 8 million years, North American porcupines unexpectedly still looked like their cousins, the Neotropical porcupines, which live across tropical Central America and South America today.
Our findings detail the North American porcupine’s evolutionary path from South America – and also solve the mystery of why it’s been so difficult to find its ancestors.
I’m a paleontologist who researches the fossilized bones and teeth of extinct animals. With museum curator Jon Bloch, I created a class where we analyzed bone structure to reach the conclusions of our study.
Why it matters
The modern North American porcupine is distinctive among its spiky relatives. It has a short tail, a jaw that can scrape bark from trees and weighs between 10 and 25 pounds (4.5 and 11.3 kilograms).
While clearly related, Neotropical porcupines look different. They have long, grasping tails, weaker jaws and weigh between 1.5 and 10 pounds (0.68 and 4.5 kilograms).
DNA analyses of modern animals estimate that these two groups separated about 10 million years ago.
This is where the mystery comes in. Fossils of the North American porcupine are all younger than 1.8 million years old. In other words, roughly 8.2 million years’ worth of fossils of North American porcupine were missing.
All researchers had were bits of jaws and tails that looked like they belonged to Neotropical porcupines.
Two competing hypotheses could explain the similarity.
Some scientists argued that the jaw and tail fossils of early ancestors of North American porcupines should look more like their modern descendants. Researchers who backed this idea suggested that the fossil record was incomplete for some unexplained reason, but that it was still possible that fossils that supported their hypothesis may eventually turn up.
Other scientists suggested that all early ancestral porcupines might have had jaws and tails similar to today’s Neotropical porcupines. North American porcupine ancestors might be hidden in the existing fossil record because – based on jaws and tails alone – they look identical to Neotropical porcupine ancestors. Only younger fossils would show distinctive traits because that’s when those traits appeared.
This debate went on for decades. It was impossible to solve with the available fossils.
How we did our work
Then researchers from the Florida Museum of Natural History unearthed a 2 million-year-old nearly complete skeleton of a porcupine in north-central Florida in 2005.
The fossil had a long tail and no bark-gnawing jaw, similar to Neotropical porcupines. But it also had dozens more bones that we could use to resolve relationships.
Collecting that evidence required combing through all the bones, looking for hundreds of minute details – like the shapes of ridges or patterns of boundaries on bones – and comparing these details with skeletons of modern North American and Neotropical porcupines. Bloch and I created a course in which students each took on one portion of the project.
Together, we came up with a list of nearly 150 informative details. Even though the specimen had a few traits similar to Neotropical porcupines, more evidence supported the idea that this fossil was a closer relative of North American porcupines.
Since this porcupine had a jaw and tail like its Neotropical cousins, it’s likely that most older relatives of the North American porcupine were also missing the distinctive traits of their modern descendants.
In other words, the solution to the mystery is that the fossil record for North American porcupines appeared young because the reinforced jaw and shorter tail evolved relatively recently. Porcupines looked different than what we expected for much of their 10 million years of ancestry.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Natasha S. Vitek, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The science section of our news blog STM Daily News provides readers with captivating and up-to-date information on the latest scientific discoveries, breakthroughs, and innovations across various fields. We offer engaging and accessible content, ensuring that readers with different levels of scientific knowledge can stay informed. Whether it’s exploring advancements in medicine, astronomy, technology, or environmental sciences, our science section strives to shed light on the intriguing world of scientific exploration and its profound impact on our daily lives. From thought-provoking articles to informative interviews with experts in the field, STM Daily News Science offers a harmonious blend of factual reporting, analysis, and exploration, making it a go-to source for science enthusiasts and curious minds alike. https://stmdailynews.com/category/science/
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Tech
A third of the world’s population lacks internet connectivity − airborne communications stations could change that
Mohamed-Slim Alouini, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and Mariette DiChristina, Boston University
About one-third of the global population, around 3 billion people, don’t have access to the internet or have poor connections because of infrastructure limitations, economic disparities and geographic isolation.
Today’s satellites and ground-based networks leave communications gaps where, because of geography, setting up traditional ground-based communications equipment would be too expensive.
High-altitude platform stations – telecommunications equipment positioned high in the air, on uncrewed balloons, airships, gliders and airplanes – could increase social and economic equality by filling internet connectivity gaps in ground and satellite coverage. This could allow more people to participate fully in the digital age.
One of us, Mohamed-Slim Alouini, is an electrical engineer who contributed to an experiment that showed it is possible to provide high data rates and ubiquitous 5G coverage from the stratosphere. The stratosphere is the second lowest layer of the atmosphere, ranging from 4 to 30 miles above the Earth. Commercial planes usually fly in the lower part of the stratosphere. The experiment measured signals between platform stations and users on the ground in three scenarios: a person staying in one place, a person driving a car and a person operating a boat.
My colleagues measured how strong the signal is in relation to interference and background noise levels. This is one of the measures of network reliability. The results showed that the platform stations can support high-data-rate applications such as streaming 4K resolution videos and can cover 15 to 20 times the area of standard terrestrial towers.
Early attempts by Facebook and Google to commercially deploy platform stations were unsuccessful. But recent investments, technological improvements and interest from traditional aviation companies and specialized aerospace startups may change the equation.
The goal is global connectivity, a cause that brought the platform stations idea recognition in the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Top 10 Emerging Technologies report. The international industry initiative HAPS Alliance, which includes academic partners, is also pushing toward that goal.
Fast, cost effective, flexible
Platform stations would be faster, more cost effective and more flexible than satellite-based systems.
Because they keep communications equipment closer to Earth than satellites, the stations could offer stronger, higher-capacity signals. This would enable real-time communications speedy enough to communicate with standard smartphones, high-resolution capabilities for imaging tasks and greater sensitivity for sensing applications. They transmit data via free-space optics, or light beams, and large-scale antenna array systems, which can send large amounts of data quickly.
Satellites can be vulnerable to eavesdropping or jamming when their orbits bring them over adversarial countries. But platform stations remain within the airspace of a single country, which reduces that risk.
High-altitude platform stations are also easier to put in place than satellites, which have high launch and maintenance costs. And the regulatory requirements and compliance procedures required to secure spots in the stratosphere are likely to be simpler than the complex international laws governing satellite orbits. Platform stations are also easier to upgrade, so improvements could be deployed more quickly.
Platform stations are also potentially less polluting than satellite mega-constellations because satellites burn up upon reentry and can release harmful metals into the atmosphere, while platform stations can be powered by clean energy sources such as solar and green hydrogen.
The key challenges to practical platform stations are increasing the amount of time they can stay aloft to months at a time, boosting green onboard power and improving reliability – especially during automated takeoff and landing through the lower turbulent layers of the atmosphere.
Beyond satellites
Platform stations could play a critical role in emergency and humanitarian situations by supporting relief efforts when ground-based networks are damaged or inoperative.
The stations could also connect Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensors in remote settings to better monitor the environment and manage resources.
In agriculture, the stations could use imaging and sensing technologies to help farmers monitor crop health, soil conditions and water resources.
Their capability for high-resolution imaging could also support navigation and mapping activities crucial for cartography, urban planning and disaster response.
The stations could also do double duty by carrying instruments for atmospheric monitoring, climate studies and remote sensing of Earth’s surface features, vegetation and oceans.
From balloons to airplanes
Platform stations could be based on different types of aircraft.
Balloons offer stable, long-duration operation at high altitudes and can be tethered or free-floating. Airships, also known as dirigibles or blimps, use lighter-than-air gases and are larger and more maneuverable than balloons. They’re especially well suited for surveillance, communications and research.
Gliders and powered aircraft can be controlled more precisely than balloons, which are sensitive to variations in wind speed. In addition, powered aircraft, which include drones and fixed-wing airplanes, can provide electricity to communication equipment, sensors and cameras.
Next-generation power
Platform stations could make use of diverse power sources, including increasingly lightweight and efficient solar cells, high-energy-density batteries, green hydrogen internal combustion engines, green hydrogen fuel cells, which are now at the testing stage, and eventually, laser beam powering from ground- or space-based solar stations.
The evolution of lightweight aircraft designs coupled with advancements in high-efficiency motors and propellers enable planes to fly longer and carry heavier payloads. These cutting-edge lightweight planes could lead to platform stations capable of maneuvering in the stratosphere for extended periods.
Meanwhile, improvements in stratospheric weather models and atmospheric models make it easier to predict and simulate the conditions under which the platform stations would operate.
Bridging the global digital divide
Commerical deployment of platform stations, at least for post-disaster or emergency situations, could be in place by the end of the decade. For instance, a consortium in Japan, a country with remote mountainous and island communities, has earmarked US$100 million for solar-powered, high-altitude platform stations.
Platform stations could bridge the digital divide by increasing access to critical services such as education and health care, providing new economic opportunities and improving emergency response and environmental monitoring. As advances in technology continue to drive their evolution, platform stations are set to play a crucial role in a more inclusive and resilient digital future.
Mohamed-Slim Alouini, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and Mariette DiChristina, Dean and Professor of the Practice in Journalism, College of Communication, Boston University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
STM Daily News is a vibrant news blog dedicated to sharing the brighter side of human experiences. Emphasizing positive, uplifting stories, the site focuses on delivering inspiring, informative, and well-researched content. With a commitment to accurate, fair, and responsible journalism, STM Daily News aims to foster a community of readers passionate about positive change and engaged in meaningful conversations. Join the movement and explore stories that celebrate the positive impacts shaping our world.
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