July 18, 2012
David L. Chandler
“Researchers at MIT and the University of Central Florida (UCF) have developed a versatile new fabrication technique for making large quantities of uniform spheres from a wide variety of materials — a technique that enables unprecedented control over the design of individual, microscopic particles. The particles, including complex, patterned spheres, could find uses in everything from biomedical research and drug delivery to electronics and materials processing.
This illustration shows how a molten fiber, because of a phenomenon known as Rayleigh instability, naturally breaks up into spherical droplets. Researchers from MIT and UCF have figured out how to use this natural tendency as a way to make large quantities of perfectly uniform particles, which can have quite complex structures. Image: Yan Liang/Fink Lab
See the full article here.
sciencesprings 