December 22, 2022
The FAU researchers use a clever trick
Of course, oil isn't magnetic. So the FAU researchers use a clever trick: They designed tiny magnetic particles to which oil adheres so tightly that an electromagnet with the particles also fishes the oil out of the water. Marco Sarcletti, who was doing his master's thesis on the subject, describes the process in more detail: “We use nanoparticles made of magnetite that are surrounded by self-assembling monolayers made of alkylphosphonic acids.