Elastic effects of dilute polymer solution on bubble generation in a microfluidic flow-focusing channel

Abstract

Recently, two-phase flow in microfluidics has attracted much attention because of its importance in generating droplets or bubbles that can be used as building blocks for material synthesis and biological applications. However, there are many unresolved issues in understanding droplet and bubble generation processes, especially when complex fluids are involved. In this study, we investigated elastic effects on bubble generation processes in a flow-focusing geometry and the shapes of the produced bubbles flowing through a microchannel. We used dilute polymer solutions with nearly constant shear viscosities so that the shear-thinning effects on bubble generation could be precluded. We observed that a very small amount of polymer (poly(ethylene oxide) at ~O(10) ppm) significantly affects bubble generation. When the polymer was added to a Newtonian fluid, the fluctuation in bubble size increased notably, which was attributed to the chaotic flow dynamics in the flow-focusing region. In addition, it was demonstrated that the bubbles were thinner along the minor axis in the viscoelastic fluid than they were in the Newtonian fluid. We expect that the current results will contribute to understanding the dynamics of two-phase flow in microchannels and the design and operation of the microfluidic devices to generate microbubbles.