Abstract
In this work, we investigate the pulsation of an electrically charged jet surrounded by an immiscible dielectric liquid in flow-focusing capillary microfluidics. We have characterized a low-frequency large-amplitude pulsation and a high-frequency small-amplitude pulsation, respectively. The former, due to the unbalanced charge and fluid transportation is responsible for generating droplets with a broad size distribution. The latter is intrinsic and produces droplets with a relatively narrow size distribution. Moreover, the average size of the final droplets can be tuned via the intrinsic pulsating frequency through changing the diameter of the emitted liquid jet. Our results provide degree of control over the emulsion droplets with submicron sizes generated in microfluidic-electrospray platform.
Highlights
Emulsions are liquid droplets dispensed in another immiscible liquid phase[1]
We systematically study the operation modes of the electrically emitted droplets in immiscible liquids using a flow-focusing capillary microfluidic device
Emulsion droplets of fine size are ubiquitous in our daily life, in industrial products, and are essential for emerging photo-acoustic therapies
Summary
Emulsions are liquid droplets dispensed in another immiscible liquid phase[1]. They are useful for a myriad of applications, when the droplets are fine in size[2,3,4,5,6,7]. Emulsification approaches are plentiful, the “top-down” category mostly involves mixing two immiscible liquids in bulk processes such as homogenizing and shaking, while the “bottom-up” category is microfluidic-based to generate emulsions at the level of individual droplets[16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26] The former produces nano-sized emulsion droplets with a broad distribution in large-scale, but little control over the formation of individual droplets is available. In the high-frequency pulsation, the cone-jet pulsates between different cone angles periodically with a small amplitude, generating small droplets with a narrow size distribution By increasing this intrinsic pulsating frequency, we can tune the average droplet size to achieve control over the resultant emulsions. Our results provide guidelines for generating droplets with degree of controlled over their size and distributions in microfluidic-electrospray platform
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