Levitation – an illusion of a long time to be able to float or be in mid-air without any support has always been of interest to scientists and researchers around the globe. But ever since, its application has been limited to the fields of engineering and physics. New research suggests that levitation can be used as a method for carrying out the reaction in a contactless manner by suspending them mid-air. The reaction carried out was a basic reaction between an ionic liquid and an acid HNO3, also other reactions like acid-base reaction, etc was all done to understand the process.
In previous levitation methods, the liquid used should have some properties which help them to levitate in the atmosphere. For those techniques, the liquid should have a charge in it along with magnetic properties. But, in contrast, the acoustic levitators uses sound waves for levitation. Earlier researches using both these techniques simultaneously did not provide an efficient result, as using the existing levitators, the mixing of droplets was not possible and even if made possible the reaction could not be monitored on time. A newly developed method by Stephen Brotton and Dr Ralf Kaiser made it possible to have the chemical reaction in the air by mixing the droplets without touching them.
Professor Dr Kaiser said that the method of levitation was being used in their university for the purpose of space simulation experiments and material science, which helped them to modify the apparatus so as to carry out the reaction mid-air. Brotton, a postdoctoral student, who is also involved in this plausible discovery added that the success of this experiment was carried out using the four proof-of-concept experiments and that additional detection techniques can be added to this and are under development.
Scientists have managed to carry out reaction mid-air with the help of an acoustic levitator which suspended the different reactant droplets in the air and then mixed them with the help of varying sound waves which oscillates one of the droplets to much like fall into the other liquid droplet to give the final product. To confirm that the reaction was efficient it was carried out under probes and monitored through different types of spectroscopic methods like IR, Raman and UV -Visible.
The enhancement and growth of this method is being in the spotlight since the development, as it would reduce the number of glasswares and other breakable apparatus needed. The method can be further used to enhance the control of a reaction and also provide help in various fields of chemistry which include medicinal chemistry, biochemistry and many more.
Reference: https://pubs.acs.org
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