Stirred, not shaken: Nanoscale magnetic stir bars
Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - 07:00
in Physics & Chemistry
Anyone who has ever worked in a laboratory has seen them: magnetic stirrers that rotate magnetic stir bars in liquids to mix them. The stir bars come in many different forms—now including nanometer-sized. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, researchers from Singapore have now introduced chains made of 40 nm iron oxide particles that act as the world's smallest magnetic stir bars, effectively stirring picoliter-sized drops of emulsion with a commercial magnetic stirrer.