Performance tuning of microfluidic flow-focusing droplet generators

Abstract

We explored a large design space to identify the coarse/fine tuners in determining droplet size, generation rate, regime, and polydispersity.

Droplets generation under different flow rates in T‐junction microchannel with a neck

“…Droplet-based microfluidics, which is a remarkable part of the microfluidic technology and has droplets with the volume down to picoliters inside, has attracted widespread attention and is significant in a broad range of applications, such as biochemical analyses, material syntheses, medical diagnostics and treatments. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] In the applications mentioned above, it is indispensable to generate droplets with the controllable size, which is as small and uniform as possible. Therefore, it is needed to understand the mechanism of droplet generation in various microfluidic devices.…”

“…tip,fe and V tip,fb are the volume of the dispersed phase tip at the end and the beginning of the filling stage, which can be calculated by Equation(2). For example, they are shown as images of t = 0.076 s inFigure 2a, and t = 0 s inFigure 2a, separately.3.1.2 | Dispersed phase flow field and forces estimation from the experiments At the junction, the shape of the interface is formed by the force balance of two immiscible phases, including the shear force (F τ ), the F I G U R E 2 Dynamics of droplet formation and droplet size in the T-junction with a neck.…”

Directed Placement for mVLSI Devices

“…In general, more expensive fabrication equipment is necessary to produce patterns with smaller features; that said, many applications in biology are not compatible with features smaller than the biological media being studied (e.g., cells, DNA molecules, etc.). In terms of rigid substrates, desktop CNC milling [23,24] represents the lower-cost, larger-feature-size end of the spectrum, while microfabrication represents the higher-cost, smaller-feature-size end of the spectrum. CNC milling typically cuts patterns into polycarbonate thermoplastic polymers, while microfabrication etches patterns into glass via photolithography.…”

“…There is an urgent need to increase access and lower barriers to entry for researchers who would like to integrate microfluidic solutions into their laboratories. The recent rise of low-cost rapid prototyping technologies, namely desktop CNC milling [23,24] and 3D printing [10,43,56], addresses the equipment and facilities barriers; however, they do not solve the key engineering design challenge. At present, most microfluidic chip designers use general-purpose CAD software such as AutoCAD or SolidWorks, which lacks domain knowledge.…”

A micrometer head integrated microfluidic device for facile droplet size control and automatic measurement of a droplet size

“…A video clip of changing the size of droplets is provided in Supporting Information Video S2. The throughput of the droplet generation on our proposed device was calculated by the following formula, and the information was added in Supporting Information , which is comparable with other droplet generating methods . …”