Chemical kinetics: Smaller, faster chemistry

Two chemicals must be mixed much faster than the reaction rate for that rate to be measured. Rapid enough mixing is difficult, especially for the many important liquid-phase and biological reactions with millisecond or shorter-timescale dynamics. But a tiny silicon device, built using the fabrication techniques of microelectronics, can reduce the mixing timescale to less than 10 ms by focusing the flow of one chemical into a thread only nanometres across.