Main > MICROFLUIDICS > Org.: FR. C. (Liquid Marbles) > Work Description
Moving a small amount of liquid on a solid surface normally isn t easy because of the contact forces between them. But physicists in Paris have a solution: They have created tiny "liquid marbles" that roll easily on surfaces. Pascale Aussillous and David Quéré at the Laboratory of the Physics of Condensed Matter at the College of France, Paris, create these marbles by coating water droplets with a hydrophobic powder--either silanized spores from the club moss Lycopodium or silanized silica [Nature, 411, 924 (2001)]. The coating suppresses the wetting of the surface by the water. The coated droplets behave as soft solids, with dramatically reduced adhesion to a solid surface. The scientists studied the contact and movement of the beads on glass and Teflon plates. Successive snapshots reveal that when the spheres are allowed to roll down a slope at high speed, they deform into peanut and doughnut shapes. The researchers suggest that the marbles could find use in microfluidics applications.
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