Ink-jet printers, flat-panel displays and biochips all require the precise placement of microscopic amounts of fluids, but getting fluids to go where you want takes a lot more than just asking nicely. Researchers at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, have come up with a promising approach. Their "electrocapillary" system, which uses no moving parts, shuttles fluid quickly through tubes as narrow as 350 micrometers wide-roughly three times the width of a human hair.

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