On November 9, Prof. Richard N. Zare from Stanford University visited our group at Prof. Lin’s invitation and delivered a presentation titled “Water, so common, so mysterious”. Before the presentation, he introduced some differences of doctoral and post-doc programs between China and the US.

    Prof. Zare showed several interesting properties of micrometer-scale water droplets: In the droplets, proteins can unfold quickly, and digestion for sequencing can be done within seconds. Moreover, certain reaction can be accelerated by nearly a thousand times, some reactions with positive free energy change can spontaneously happen, and some molecules can be reduced without adding reductant. The reason behind these weird phenomena is hydroxide ions aggregating at the surface of the droplets, where their negative charge generates a strong electric field and influences the reactions. These hydroxide ions can also give their electron away and turn into hydroxyl radicals, generating hydrogen peroxide. After the presentation, Prof. Zare had an in-depth discussion with us.

    Prof. Zare has been an honorary professor of Tsinghua University since 2007 and has a long-term cooperative relationship with our group. During the years, Dr. Haifang Li, Dr. Huibin Wei and Dr. Dan Gao from our group have completed exchange scholar programs at Zare’s laboratory, and a collaborative research paper has been published on Lab on Chip magazine.