Metal That Pumps Liquid Uphill

The metal, revealed in an upcoming issue of Applied Physics Letters, may prove invaluable in pumping microscopic amounts of liquid around a medical diagnostic chip, cooling a computer's processor, or turning almost any simple metal into an anti-bacterial surface.

"We're able to change the surface structure of almost any piece of metal so that we can control how liquid responds to it," says Chunlei Guo, associate professor of optics at the University of Rochester. "We can even control the direction in which the liquid flows, or whether liquid flows at all."

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So how dose this new technology effect our space exploration or even here on earth as huge water works systems could be made obsolete? Would love to hear what you guys think.

[edit on 3-6-2009 by jman1a]

Well, there is not quite enough information there to make a definitive decision about impact. If they can speed the process up significantly and then make very large layered wicks off this, then the idea of moving water at 152 ft/s would be attractive. If nothing else, it would help make stationary hydroelectric plants a possibility (meaning using still lake water to turn turbines rather than capturing a river).