hydrophobic tagged posts

The newly developed sealant that was applied over a 3-mm-diameter hole in a porcine blood vessel. Credit: Image courtesy of National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS)

In recent years, patients with emphysema have been increasing mainly among middle-aged and elderly males due to aging and excessive smoking. Emphysema makes brittle lungs, and in severe cases, holes develop in the lung tissue, causing air leakage. Researchers have developed a new sealant to close holes developed in lungs and blood vessels using Alaska pollock gelatin, and have reported that the sealant is about 12X stronger than conventional sealants and is able to resist pressure as high as ~2.8X the normal blood pressure.

The advantage is that it remains liquid at room temperature as it contains gelatin extracted from ...

The discovery may aid Water Purification and Oil Refining. Researchers have observed droplets spontaneously fling themselves from thin fibers. As long as the strands are moderately hydrophobic and relatively thin, small droplets combining into one are apt to dance themselves right off of the tightrope.

“We were studying how insect wings with a hairy structure clean themselves, and an undergrad Adam Williams saw two droplets merge and suddenly leave a strand of hair,” said Chuan-Hua Chen, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke. “Since we couldn’t easily reproduce the effect, we thought it was just an artifact, perhaps due to the slight breeze created by the humidifier in the experiment.”

IMAGES: self-propelled removal of drops from a hydrophobic fiber, ...