Nanowicks

Fiber geometries could be tailored for pumping, filtering, mixing, separating, and other effects.

Nanowicks are dense mats of nanoscale fibers that are expected to enable the development of a variety of novel capillary pumps, filters, and fluidic control devices. Nanowicks make it possible obtain a variety of novel effects, including capillary pressures orders of magnitude greater than those afforded by microscale and conventional macroscale wicks. While wicking serves the key purpose of transporting fluid, the nanofiber geometry of a nanowick makes it possible to exploit additional effects — most notably, efficient nanoscale mixing, fluidic effects for logic or control, and ultrafiltration (in which mats of nanofibers act as biomolecular sieves).