{"id":256,"date":"2017-05-30T14:38:38","date_gmt":"2017-05-30T19:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/?p=256"},"modified":"2022-09-02T13:06:31","modified_gmt":"2022-09-02T18:06:31","slug":"more-proof-that-the-nanoscale-is-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/?p=256","title":{"rendered":"More Proof that the Nanoscale is Different"},"content":{"rendered":"

Results reported in the May 24, 2017 issue of Phys.org is titled: \u201cWater is surprisingly ordered on the nanoscale.\u201d\u00a0 (Reference is at the end of the blog.) \u201cResearchers from AMOLF and Swiss EPFL have shown that the surface of minuscule water drops surrounded by a hydrophobic substance such as oil is surprisingly ordered. At room temperature, the surface water molecules of these droplets have much stronger interactions than at a normal water surface. \u00a0This may shed new light on a variety of atmospheric, biological and even geological processes.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

The article indicates that the researchers have developed an ultraviolet laser with overlapping, very short pulse duration, which enabled them to measure water droplets in the region of 25nm to 50nm.\u00a0 The purpose of this work was to develop an understanding of the interaction these size droplets have in interacting with other particles.\u00a0 \u00a0Water droplets this size occur naturally in the atmosphere.\u00a0 Specific investigations were looking at the reaction in a hydrophobic environment.<\/p>\n

The resulting findings indicate that the surface of the water is more organized than expected.\u00a0 There is a very hydrogen bond that appears in supercooled liquid at least 50 degrees higher than anticipated.\u00a0 Researcher Sylvie Roke commented: \u201cThe chemical properties of these drops depend on how the water molecules are organized on the surface, so it’s really important to understand what’s going on there<\/em>.”\u00a0 Future work will target the water surface with different materials including salt.<\/p>\n

For me the interesting part of the work is that it is examining liquid molecules and not solid material.\u00a0 If one examines the work that has been done on material like iron or aluminum, there exists a more reactive material when the particle size get slightly smaller than 50nm.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 The reason is that the number of atoms on the surface and able to react with external forces is a significant portion of the total atoms.\u00a0 A very rough rule-of-thumb<\/u> that I use is at 50nm about 3% of the atoms can be influenced by the surface interactions.\u00a0 At 3nm, roughly 50% of the atoms can be influenced by surface interactions.\u00a0 Somewhere between these two extremes, there is sufficient interaction to cause a change in atomic<\/em> and molecular behavior.<\/p>\n

The fact that the researchers can observe results on nano-sized \u00a0liquids is very promising.\u00a0 Work has been ongoing on solids for years and we are still learning about how the surface interactions influence the reactions.\u00a0 Being able to move into the liquid realm should provide for some interesting and unexpected results.<\/p>\n

Remember that the material properties continue to change as the size gets smaller.\u00a0 The pictures of different size gold particles in solution with each exhibiting different colors is just one example of changing properties.\u00a0 Imagine what will be found if different sized molecules of the same molecules can be individually examined.\u00a0 This work could be the first steps in an interesting and promising new field of research.<\/p>\n

References:<\/strong> https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2017-05-surprisingly-nanoscale.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Results reported in the May 24, 2017 issue of Phys.org is titled: \u201cWater is surprisingly ordered on the nanoscale.\u201d\u00a0 (Reference is at the end of the blog.) \u201cResearchers [..]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}