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Nanotech clothing protection spray, LiquidOff, in a Kickstarter campaign

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“Magical, self-cleaning, water-repelling spray” is the description Aken Technologies has on its Kickstarter LiquidOff campaign page and a June 17, 2014 news item on Nanowerk offers more enthusiasm,

A new company with a revolutionary product likely to disrupt the clothing industry has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to help get it off the ground.

Aken Technologies, LLC of Albuquerque, New Mexico is seeking to raise $25,000 for its LiquidOff product that uses innovative safe and eco-friendly nanotechnology to instantly make your clothing waterproof and self-cleaning.

The easy-to-use spray-on solution repels everything from wine spills to coffee and tea stains to barbeque sauce messes to mud splatters. And it’s not just for clothing. It’s just as effective for your shoes, car seats, tablecloths and furniture, and almost anything else you want to protect. It can be used on nearly all textiles and other surfaces such as leather, cotton, silk, suede, metal, plastic and paper.

A June 14, 2014 Aken Technologies news release, which originated the news item, describes more of the product benefits

LiquidOff is the first 100 percent green and eco-friendly solution that is not only chemical and aerosol free but also incorporates antimicrobial agents that protect against the transmission of microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi.

For immediate and effective protection, you simply spray LiquidOff on the material and blow dry it or iron it. Alternatively, let the material dry for itself for a few hours. The treatment dries clear onto all surfaces and is completely invisible to the naked eye. It doesn’t leave a white cloudy haze like other products.

LiquidOff does hide the unsightly evidence of perspiration and maintains the breathability and texture of all treated materials. Garments will not be damaged, hardened, or become uncomfortable. Unlike existing products that can be toxic, LiquidOff’s proprietary trade-secret water-based formulation is completely safe, even for use on kids clothing.

LiquidOff is also “super hydrophobic.” It goes way beyond other hydrophobic liquid repellant products and its properties are much longer-lasting. Initial tests show that one treatment can provide over five years of protection. For areas that require constant washing, such as clothing, a treatment can last upwards of 20 washes.

LiquidOff is the brainchild of Aken Technologies’ CEO and founder, Harold Stewart, who recently left the security of his job as a Department of Defense electrical engineer to throw himself full-time into the business. Working with a scientific research team they brought nanotechnology out of the lab and applied it into a real world manufacturing solution.

Stewart said, “Our group has created a product that is truly unique and revolutionary. I like to say that LiquidOff is truly your knight in shining armor. As a company we are dedicated to providing advanced technology and innovative applications using the power of nanotechnology and its intrinsic properties in order to position ourselves as a leading edge nanotechnology solutions and applications provider.”

LiquidOff is the first of many unique and effective products that Aken Technologies intends to bring to market based on its cutting edge developments in nanotechnology. On Kickstarter the company is looking for contributions of as little as $5.00.

With 32 days left to achieve their goal of $25,000, Aken Technologies has raised a little over $15,000 which can be seen here.  The campaign video is approximately 3 mins., 30 secs. and not only demonstrates previously mentioned product benefits, it reveals the product’s ability to enhance one’s dating prospects,

Set to a bouncy soundtrack, the video also features the product’s inventor/developer, Harold Stewart, discussing LiquidOff.

There does seem to be a company website at http://www.liquidoff.com but all of my attempts to access it lead me back to the Kickstarter campaign. I’m not sure what that means, if anything. In any event, I wish Harold Stewart and his partners good luck!

ETA June 25, 2014: Dexter Johnson asks some pointed questions about this campaign in his June 25, 2014 posting (Nanoclast blog on the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] website),

The  [Kickstarter] “investors” don’t really seem to be formulating the right questions. (Their questions are reasonable but not relevant to Aken’s prospects for success.) A typical question is something along the lines of: “Will this technology work?” Yes, it works; there’s been a long commercial history of hydrophobic materials being used effectively in textiles. Instead, what potential investors should be asking is how Aken’s offering is better than—or how can it even compete with—long-established companies that do the same.

McGill University and Sandia Labs validate Luttinger liquid model predictions

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A collaboration between McGill University (Québec, Canada) and Sandia National Laboratories (New Mexico, US) has resulted in the answer to a question that was posed over 50 years ago in the field of quantum physics according to a Jan. 23, 2014 McGill University news release (also on EurekAlert),

How would electrons behave if confined to a wire so slender they could pass through it only in single-file?

The question has intrigued scientists for more than half a century. In 1950, Japanese Nobel Prize winner Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, followed by American physicist Joaquin Mazdak Luttinger in 1963, came up with a mathematical model showing that the effects of one particle on all others in a one-dimensional line would be much greater than in two- or three-dimensional spaces. Among quantum physicists, this model came to be known as the “Luttinger liquid” state.

The news release provides more information about the problem and about how the scientists addressed it,

What does one-dimensional quantum physics involve?  Gervais [Professor Guillaume Gervais of McGill’s Department of Physics] explains it this way: “Imagine that you are driving on a highway and the traffic is not too dense. If a car stops in front of you, you can get around it by passing to the left or right. That’s two-dimensional physics. But if you enter a tunnel with a single lane and a car stops, all the other cars behind it must slam on the brakes. That’s the essence of the Luttinger liquid effect. The way electrons behave in the Luttinger state is entirely different because they all become coupled to one another.”

To scientists, “what is so fascinating and elegant about quantum physics in one dimension is that the solutions are mathematically exact,” Gervais adds. “In most other cases, the solutions are only approximate.”

Making a device with the correct parameters to conduct the experiment was no simple task, however, despite the team’s 2011 discovery of a way to do so. It took years of trial, and more than 250 faulty devices – each of which required 29 processing steps – before Laroche’s [McGill PhD student Dominique Laroche[ painstaking efforts succeeded in producing functional devices yielding reliable data.  “So many things could go wrong during the fabrication process that troubleshooting the failed devices felt like educated guesswork at times,” explains Laroche.  “Adding in the inherent failure rate compounded at each processing step made the fabrication of these devices extremely challenging.”

In particular, the experiment measures the effect that a very small electrical current in one of the wires has on a nearby wire.  This can be viewed as the “friction” between the two circuits, and the experiment shows that this friction increases as the circuits are cooled to extremely low temperatures. This effect is a strong prediction of Luttinger liquid theory.

…

“It took a very long time to make these devices,” said Lilly. “It’s not impossible to do in other labs, but Sandia has crystal-growing capabilities, a microfabrication facility, and support for fundamental research from DOE’s office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES), and we’re very interested in understanding the fundamental ideas that drive the behavior of very small systems.”

The findings could lead to practical applications in electronics and other fields. While it’s difficult at this stage to predict what those might be, “the same was true in the case of the laser when it was invented,” Gervais notes.  “Nanotechnologies are already helping us in medicine, electronics and engineering – and this work shows that they can help us get to the bottom of a long-standing question in quantum physics.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

1D-1D Coulomb Drag Signature of a Luttinger Liquid by D. Laroche, G. Gervais, M. P. Lilly, and J. L. Reno. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1244152 Published Online January 23 2014

This paper is behind a paywall.