I had a grand idea.

reply to post by daskakik

MEC scientists have developed machinery which can drill holes just 22 microns (0.022 mm) in width, less than half the width of a human hair. The new technique uses a process called electro-discharge machining and will eventually enable improvements in the miniaturization of electro-mechanical systems.

Source

There is an inherent problem with how lasers drill holes as they are not completely vertical.


Nonetheless the OP has presented an interesting point that has the potential of dealing with serious problems.

reply to post by ErosA433


I was just posting my idea and seeing what people thought.

reply to post by Kashai


Thank you this topic was made for theoretical discussion on the applications of this technology.

We also have processes such as this adsabs.harvard.edu...
Also materials like this www.matweb.com...

Perhaps we can think of a way to combine the two.

Kashai
Nonetheless the OP has presented an interesting point that has the potential of dealing with serious problems.

There is no potential if it can't be made. The whole idea, which I doubt will work like the OP thinks, depends on cutting out the forms of molecules on the filtering material.

100nm is huge when you consider the size of the molecules that need to be filtered.

reply to post by Luuke123

30 microns is 30,000 nm. It is no good.

There are paper coffee filters with smaller pore sizes than that.

daskakik

Kashai
Nonetheless the OP has presented an interesting point that has the potential of dealing with serious problems.

There is no potential if it can't be made. The whole idea, which I doubt will work like the OP thinks, depends on cutting out the forms of molecules on the filtering material.

100nm is huge when you consider the size of the molecules that need to be filtered.

edit on 27-1-2014 by daskakik because: (no reason given)

Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPPs) have been explored for a multitude of applications including sub-wavelength lithography, data storage, microscopy and photonics. In this paper, we report the use of SPPs for nanomachining silicon in massively parallel fashion. A Q-switched Nd:YAG laser beam was impinged on gold-thin film deposited, porous alumina membrane (PAM) that contains periodic 2-D array of thousands of nano-holes. The silicon substrate was placed in close proximity with PAM. The formation of SPPs and their coherent interference at the exit of PAM holes created strong nanoscale electrical fields which in turn produced 50-70 nm diameter holes in silicon.

Source

reply to post by Kashai

I don't think you are fully grasping the sizes we are talking about. Here is a list of pesticides. None of these has a max length greater than 11 angstroms. That's 1.1nm.

These are fairly large molecules. The largest being Metribuzin.

As you can see 50-70 nm holes are not going to stop any of these and there is no way that you can trace the outline of molecules like these with beams this size.

There are RO membranes with pore sizes down to 0.1nm but that is not what the OP's idea is about.

reply to post by daskakik


That does not mean it is possible to make even smaller holes...

You see to live in a fantasy world where making smaller holes are impossible, while making holes the size of today was impossible 40 years ago.

To be clear what is impossible (IMO) is that you are making any sense.

Any thoughts?

Kashai
That does not mean it is possible to make even smaller holes...

You see to live in a fantasy world where making smaller holes are impossible, while making holes the size of today was impossible 40 years ago.

Actually making smaller holes is possible. I just posted that RO membranes have 0.1nm holes but the OP's idea isn't just about making holes but, cutting out the shapes of molecules. You keep posting links to laser that can't be used for this. I don't see the problem with saying the technology isn't there yet.

The problem is that even if/when the technology becomes available there is no way to keep molecules that are smaller than those cut-outs from getting through, defeating the idea anyway.

To be clear what is impossible (IMO) is that you are making any sense.

Why the attitude?

a reply to: ErosA433

This was less of a "I thought of it first" And more of a "I thought of it individually"

However, I guarantee you we will be seeing this in my lifetime.