Water cleaned 100-times faster with a new nano-filter

A liquid metal droplet-based nano-filter has been shown to filter impurities such as heavy metals and oils to clean water at an extraordinarily rapid rate. The filter has many potential applications, in environmental and industrial fields. Researchers from The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT; Melbourne, Australia) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW; Sydney, Australia) have utilized a naturally occurring green nanostructure and built upon it. The structure, a compound of aluminum oxide grows on the surface of a liquid metal droplet in the form of flakes. Each flake consists of approximately 20,000 nano-sheets. The flakes can filter...