{"id":216157,"date":"2025-06-17T21:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T02:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/physicists-use-3d-printed-spines-to-sculpt-water-surface-through-surface-tension"},"modified":"2025-06-17T21:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T02:05:11","slug":"physicists-use-3d-printed-spines-to-sculpt-water-surface-through-surface-tension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/physicists-use-3d-printed-spines-to-sculpt-water-surface-through-surface-tension","title":{"rendered":"Physicists use 3D-printed spines to sculpt water surface through surface tension"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicists-use-3d-printed-spines-to-sculpt-water-surface-through-surface-tension3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Physicists at the University of Li\u00e8ge have succeeded in sculpting the surface of water by exploiting surface tension. Using 3D printing of closely spaced spines, they have combined menisci to create programmed liquid reliefs, capable of guiding particles under the action of gravity alone. This is a promising advance for microscopic transport and sorting, as well as marine pollution control. The research is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-025-59483-x\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Nature Communications.<\/p>\n<p>Have you ever tried tilting a liquid in a glass? It\u2019s completely impossible. If you tilt the glass, the surface of the liquid will automatically return to the horizontal \u2026 except for a small\u2014barely visible\u2014curvature that forms near the edge of the glass. This curvature is called a meniscus. And this meniscus is due to capillarity, a force acting on a millimeter scale and resulting from the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/surface+tension\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">surface tension<\/a> of the liquid.<\/p>\n<p>What would happen if we could create lots of little menisci over a large surface? What if these small reliefs could add up to form slopes, valleys, or even entire landscapes \u2026 liquid? This is exactly what scientists from the GRASP laboratory at the University of Li\u00e8ge, in collaboration with Brown University (U.S.), have succeeded in doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Physicists at the University of Li\u00e8ge have succeeded in sculpting the surface of water by exploiting surface tension. Using 3D printing of closely spaced spines, they have combined menisci to create programmed liquid reliefs, capable of guiding particles under the action of gravity alone. This is a promising advance for microscopic transport and sorting, as [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1489,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}