At the third world top scientist forum in October 2020, a young Chinese scientist became the most beautiful cub in the forum, and a group of nobel prize winners, Turing award winners and academicians and other strongest brains in the world punched in. He is the young scientist Hou Xu who won the 2020 National Innovation Scramble Award and the President's Award of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his liquid gating technology was listed by the International Federation of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) as one of the top ten emerging technologies in the field of chemistry in 2020, and scientists agreed that liquid gating, as a subversive science and technology, will lead the development of material science and make profound changes in the chemical industry.
01 | Liquid gating technology
Nani? "Liquid gate"? Is it the same door as the water curtain cave of Huaguo Mountain? Congratulations, the answer is a little half right, the principle of the two is basically the same, but the functional role is very different. "Liquid gate", also known as liquid gating technology, is mainly used in membrane materials to filter and separate various fluids. This technology is also widely used in medical materials, chemical sensing examination, biological 3D printing and microfluidic chips, and has become an important supporting technology for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6.
02 | The principle of liquid gates
Before introducing, insert an advertisement for popular science, the world can be divided into macroscopic world and microscopic world, what we can see with the naked eye is the macroscopic world, and what is observed through the microscope is the microscopic world. By the way, spoilers the creatures of the microscopic world can not find us, of course, you should not be proud, maybe there is a super macroscopic world creature in the universe is also spying on us with a microscope, otherwise the universe is so grand, casually to a galaxy will fly for tens of thousands of years. It's a bit off-topic, so let's talk about this topic next time.
Back to the point, the doors in the macroscopic world are basically solid, such as diesel doors, steel doors, valves, etc., but the doors in the microscopic world have different forms, the most common of which is the molecular layer of some solid membrane materials. For example, the meltblown cloth in the middle of the mask is the "door" in the microscopic, and it can block the small virus from entering after wearing it. However, this solid door also has several fatal problems: one is a bit deadly, that is, a tendon, which cannot be automatically opened or closed as needed; second, it cannot block more tiny substances, like gas molecules can be easily crossed like Laoshan Taoists; third, the gap of this "door" is often stuck in the "fat man" when those more delicate substances pass through, so that it cannot be entered and exited, and over time, the "fat man" is piled up like a mountain, and the membrane material will be polluted or blocked, which is also our sewage treatment, air purification, A common challenge in desalination.
The "liquid gate" invented by Hou Xu is fluid, so its surface reaches a molecular level smooth, and there are no gaps in the entire surface. Closing the liquid door in the city can not rush out, outside the city can not kill in, open the door unimpeded, leave no residue, people and animals are harmless. And the 'liquid door' is sensitive to pressure, the sensitivity is very high, and the switch is fast and free.
03 | A breakthrough in liquid gating technology
How did Hou Xu break through the liquid gating technology? Behind the flowers and applause must be hardship and sweat, when inventing the liquid door technology, he also encountered many bottlenecks, and many experiments were unsuccessful. Hou Xu loves to watch popular science content on TV and get inspiration from it. One day, when he saw a video about how the lungs breathe, he suddenly opened it and thought of a clever way to make a "door" with liquid. Animals have a liquid-filled tissue alveoli in their lungs, and the pores on the alveoli can be expanded and contracted according to changes in external pressure, forming openable ordnable pores. When the pressure is small, the liquid fills the pores on the alveoli to seal it, when the pressure is large, the liquid sealing "door" will open immediately, and between the opening and closing of the liquid "door", the gas in the alveoli can pass or block. Hou Xu was inspired by this and proposed the concept of "liquid gating".
04 | Application of liquid gating
The application of liquid door is very extensive, saying that more to cross many industry fields, more brain-burning, just drum a deep chestnut bar, talk about the use of liquid gating made of medical catheters. The so-called medical catheter is a soft tube inserted into the human body, which is generally used for minimally invasive medical device implantation or liquid drainage, such as urinary catheters, hemodialysis tubes and so on. The traditional catheter has a single performance, like a cold single dog, will not communicate with each other, does not call the human environment after implantation, and is easy to cause problems such as blood clots and infections. Liquid gated catheter, when the internal and external pressure difference changes, the gated liquid can change dynamically, different from the traditional medical catheter of the drug can only come out from the port in and out, the gated liquid catheter can change according to changes in the human environment, and has anticoagulant function. In a word, the liquid portal catheter can communicate with the human environment and make adjustments, with a certain degree of intelligence.
Science and technology to change the world, Chinese science and technology also began to have the power to change the world, I believe that one day, China will also stand at the forefront of science, leading the development of world science and technology.