As the march of miniaturization continues, there is an ever-increasing demand for devices that can control the small-scale motion of liquids in technologies such as liquid crystal displays, printing and chemical synthesis. Recent innovations in electrofluidic control have achieved fluid flow speeds of several millimetres per second. But a new method developed by Menno Prins and colleagues at Philips Research Eindhoven in the Netherlands exploits the intrinsically small-scale effects of capillarity - ideally suited to miniature devices - to reach flow speeds a hundred times faster (M W J Prins et al 2001 Science 291 277).