Cooking up a Smart Nanofluid

Specialized nanoparticles floating in water make a fluid that can be switched between two states with different thermal properties, according to the 13 March Physical Review Letters. If the particles start out evenly distributed throughout the fluid volume, heat transfers more rapidly through the fluid than if they are more concentrated close to the heat source. The flow pattern is not fixed like the steady rolling produced in pure water, which suggests more complicated physics than researchers had previously predicted. But the team hopes some version of their fluid can be used to improve the regulation of heat flow in future devices.