A red colored droplet inching across a curved track COURTESY OF THE BOHRINGER LAB, PHOTO BY MICHAEL ISAACS
The Device: Although nature can inspire great design solutions, it often needs a bit of tweaking. When researchers at the University of Washington wanted to create a system to move miniscule amounts of liquid, they looked to the lotus leaf with its extremely hydrophobic surface for inspiration. But while water can move along the leaf’s surface without getting stuck, there is no way to control its flow—a necessary quality for designing small portable biomedical devices.
The researchers first created a hydrophobic surface that mimicked the lotus leaf by building micro-scale pillars whose surface texture helped keep water droplets spherical. Amidst those pillars they added a track of arched lines, like a stack of parentheses, which helped the droplets stay in place. The researchers could make ...
