Occam’s razor is a heuristic stating that among competing theories, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be chosen. Researchers at Northwestern University would probably have to agree, having recently discovered a surprisingly easy way to make nanofluidic devices. Using paper and scissors, they can cut a nanofluid device into any shape and size they want, adding to the method\u2019s versatility.<\/p>\n
Nanofluidic devices are attracting researchers\u2019 interest because their thin channels can transport ions, and with them a higher than normal electric current, making the devices promising for use in batteries and new systems for harvesting energy, water purification, and sorting DNA.<\/p>\n
The two Northwestern researchers involved, Jiaxing Huang and Kalyan Raidongia, established that simply stacking up sheets of the inexpensive material graphene oxide<\/a> creates a flexible paper-like form of the material that has tens of thousands of very useful channels.<\/p>\n A tiny gap forms naturally between neighboring sheets, and each gap is a channel through which ions can flow. This paper-and-scissors method one day could be used to manufacture large-scale nanofluidic devices without relying on expensive lithography techniques.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a way, we were surprised that these nanochannels actually worked, because creating the device was so easy,\u201d said Jiaxing Huang. \u201cNo one had thought about the space between sheet-like materials before. Using the space as a flow channel was a wild idea. We ran our experiment at least 10 times to be sure we were right.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n With a pair of regular scissors, the researchers just cut the paper into the needed shape, which, in their experiment\u2019s case, was a rectangle. The experiment is described in a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.<\/p>\n \u201cMany people have studied graphene oxide papers but mainly for their mechanical properties or for making graphene\/ Here we show that graphene oxide paper naturally generates numerous nanofluidic ion channels when layered,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Huang said.<\/p>\nPaper and Scissors Method<\/h2>\n
Graphene Oxide Sandwich<\/h2>\n