Sub-micron thick liquid sheets produced by isotropically etched glass nozzles

Crissman, Christopher; Mo, Mianzhen; Chen, Zhijiang; Yang, Jie; Huyke, Diego A.; Glenzer, S. H.; Ledbetter, Kathryn; Nunes, João; Ng, May Ling; Wang, Hengzi; Shen, Xiaozhe; Wang, Xijie; DePonte, Daniel P.

doi:10.1039/d1lc00757b

Cited by 22 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…The free-flowing nature of the heterostructure also provides a number of unique benefits. Sheet jets at comparable flow rates have been used successfully for liquid studies in vacuum by employing high-performance vacuum pumps and liquid catching systems, − ,, which allows liquid–liquid interfaces to be studied with techniques that have been previously inaccessible due to the challenges of maintaining liquids in vacuum. The liquid interface is also constantly refreshed, which allows for examination of kinetics of interface formation as well as chemical and physical processes and reactions mediated by the interface on fast time scales (ca.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Liquid Heterostructures: Generation of Liquid–Liquid Interfaces in Free-Flowing Liquid Sheets

et al. 2022

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Chemical reactions and biological processes are frequently governed by the structure and dynamics of the interface between two liquid phases, but these interfaces are often difficult to study due to the relative abundance of the bulk liquids. Here, we demonstrate a method for generating multilayer thin film stacks of liquids, which we call liquid heterostructures. These free-flowing layered liquid sheets are produced with a microfluidic nozzle that impinges two converging jets of one liquid onto opposite sides of a third jet of another liquid. The resulting sheet consists of two layers of the first liquid enveloping an inner layer of the second liquid. Infrared microscopy, white light reflectivity, and imaging ellipsometry measurements demonstrate that the buried liquid layer has a tunable thickness and displays well-defined liquid–liquid interfaces and that this inner layer can be only tens of nanometers thick. The demonstrated multilayer liquid sheets minimize the amount of bulk liquid relative to their buried interfaces, which makes them ideal targets for spectroscopy and scattering experiments.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Liquid Heterostructures: Generation of Liquid–Liquid Interfaces in Free-Flowing Liquid Sheets

et al. 2022

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“…Surface tension brings the cylindrical rims back together at a node, where another, smaller sheet is generated orthogonal to the first. Closely analogous structures can be generated by means of a similar momentum transfer using a single converging channel (Ha et al, 2018;Crissman et al, 2022) (Figure 1B,right) or impinging gas jets on a cylindrical jet (Koralek et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Liquid sheet jets have demonstrated substantial additional benefits over the traditional microjets for XFEL applications of solution-phase samples (Ekimova et al, 2015;Galinis et al, 2017;Koralek et al, 2018;Menzi et al, 2020;Nunes et al, 2020;Crissman et al, 2022). Liquid sheets provide a target which can be hundreds of microns to several millimeters wide while having thicknesses on scales from tens of microns to tens of nanometers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This work examines the dimensions and scalings of liquid sheets produced by isotropically etched microfluidic nozzles that have been developed for XFEL applications (Koralek et al, 2018;Crissman et al, 2022;Hoffman et al, 2022), and the outlook for using these sheets as large-area targets for next-generation XFELs. Three distinct nozzle geometries were examined and compared: a traditional round jet colliding geometry ("off-chip colliding", Figure 1B, left), a colliding jet geometry where the collision point is at the chip exit ("on-chip colliding", Figure 1B, center), and a converging channel geometry (Figure 1B,right).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Microfluidic liquid sheets as large-area targets for high repetition XFELs

Hoffman

Driel

Kröll

et al. 2022

Front. Mol. Biosci.

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The high intensity of X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs) can damage solution-phase samples on every scale, ranging from the molecular or electronic structure of a sample to the macroscopic structure of a liquid microjet. By using a large surface area liquid sheet microjet as a sample target instead of a standard cylindrical microjet, the incident X-ray spot size can be increased such that the incident intensity falls below the damage threshold. This capability is becoming particularly important for high repetition rate XFELs, where destroying a target with each pulse would require prohibitively large volumes of sample. We present here a study of microfluidic liquid sheet dimensions as a function of liquid flow rate. Sheet lengths, widths and thickness gradients are shown for three styles of nozzles fabricated from isotropically etched glass. In-vacuum operation and sample recirculation using these nozzles is demonstrated. The effects of intense XFEL pulses on the structure of a liquid sheet are also briefly examined.

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“…The momentum that creates the sheet is provided by the streams of liquid themselves, and this method works reliably to produce sheets of desired thickness and stability. In a subsequent paper the authors have improved on this design ( Crissman et al, 2022 ), however at this time the improved design is not available commercially.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Delivery of stable ultra-thin liquid sheets in vacuum for biochemical spectroscopy

Barnard

Lee

Alexander

et al. 2022

Front. Mol. Biosci.

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The development of ultra-thin flat liquid sheets capable of running in vacuum has provided an exciting new target for X-ray absorption spectroscopy in the liquid and solution phases. Several methods have become available for delivering in-vacuum sheet jets using different nozzle designs. We compare the sheets produced by two different types of nozzle; a commercially available borosillicate glass chip using microfluidic channels to deliver colliding jets, and an in-house fabricated fan spray nozzle which compresses the liquid on an axis out of a slit to achieve collision conditions. We find in our tests that both nozzles are suitable for use in X-ray absorption spectroscopy with the fan spray nozzle producing thicker but more stable jets than the commercial nozzle. We also provide practical details of how to run these nozzles in vacuum.

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Sub-micron thick liquid sheets produced by isotropically etched glass nozzles

Abstract: We report on the design and testing of glass nozzles used to produce liquid sheets. The sheet nozzles use a single converging channel chemically etched into glass wafers by standard...

Cited by 22 publications

References 19 publications

Liquid Heterostructures: Generation of Liquid–Liquid Interfaces in Free-Flowing Liquid Sheets

Liquid Heterostructures: Generation of Liquid–Liquid Interfaces in Free-Flowing Liquid Sheets

Microfluidic liquid sheets as large-area targets for high repetition XFELs

Delivery of stable ultra-thin liquid sheets in vacuum for biochemical spectroscopy

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