Possible use of nanofluids for digital display

7 March 2008

Borca-Tasciuc, a professor of mechanical engineering and his team of researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have carried out experiments on nanofluids and observed that these fluids show enhanced performance when exposed to electrical fields. This could lead to various new types of microscale fluidic devices including cell phone displays and digital display devices.

In various applications such as lab-on-chip analysis systems, optical device and digital device systems, a small volume of liquid having characteristics properties is required. Although many experiments were earlier conducted with reular fluids, fluids containing nanoparticles are being tried first time.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnc Institute have used bismuth telluride nanoparticles for present study. Droplets containing these nanoparticles in water based solutions were placed onto a teflon-coated silicon wafer. As soon as the electric field was applied to the droplets, a strong change in contact angle of droplets with wafer was noticed.

Researchers carried out similar experiments with liquids waithout nanoparticles and noticed a less contact angle change. This ability to change contact angle in naoparticles will enhance potential applications especially for moving liquids in microsystems or cooling computer chips.

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