Difference between revisions of "Dripping, Jetting, Drops, and Wetting: The Magic of Microfluidics"
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==Soft matter keywords== | ==Soft matter keywords== | ||
| − | Surface tension, Rayleigh-Plateau instability, hydrodynamic focusing, emulsion | + | Surface tension, Rayleigh-Plateau instability, hydrodynamic focusing, emulsion, capillary number, Weber number |
==Summary== | ==Summary== | ||
| + | David Weitz and coworkers describe their work creating emulsions using concentric capillary tubes. They introduce two geometries for making these controlled emulsions: with <i>coaxial flow</i>, an outer fluid flow provides a shear force that pulls droplets out from an inner capillary (Figure 1), whereas with <i>flow-focusing</i>, the flow of the outer fluid (rather than the tube itself) focuses the inner fluid before shearing, producing noticeably smaller droplets (Figure 2). | ||
| + | |||
| + | The authors go on to realize that with coaxial flow, or <i>co-flow</i> as they call it for short, they can create cascading emulsion events with relative ease and control (Figure 3). Most impressive is the authors' "monodisperse triple emulsions," that make use of such recursion (Figure 4). | ||
==Soft matter discussion== | ==Soft matter discussion== | ||
Revision as of 04:28, 1 April 2009
Zach Wissner-Gross (March 30, 2009)
Information
Dripping, Jetting, Drops, and Wetting: The Magic of Microfluidics
A. S. Utada, L.-Y. Chu, A. Fernandez-Nieves, D. R. Link, C. Holtze, and D. A. Weitz
MRS Bulletin, 2007, 32, 702-708
Soft matter keywords
Surface tension, Rayleigh-Plateau instability, hydrodynamic focusing, emulsion, capillary number, Weber number
Summary
David Weitz and coworkers describe their work creating emulsions using concentric capillary tubes. They introduce two geometries for making these controlled emulsions: with coaxial flow, an outer fluid flow provides a shear force that pulls droplets out from an inner capillary (Figure 1), whereas with flow-focusing, the flow of the outer fluid (rather than the tube itself) focuses the inner fluid before shearing, producing noticeably smaller droplets (Figure 2).
The authors go on to realize that with coaxial flow, or co-flow as they call it for short, they can create cascading emulsion events with relative ease and control (Figure 3). Most impressive is the authors' "monodisperse triple emulsions," that make use of such recursion (Figure 4).
