Issue 41, 2018

Opposed flow focusing: evidence of a second order jetting transition

Abstract

We propose a novel microfluidic “opposed-flow” geometry in which the continuous fluid phase is fed into a junction in a direction opposite to the dispersed phase. This pulls out the dispersed phase into a micron-sized jet, which decays into micron-sized droplets. As the driving pressure is tuned to a critical value, the jet radius vanishes as a power law down to sizes below 1 μm. By contrast, the conventional “coflowing” junction leads to a first order jetting transition, in which the jet disappears at a finite radius of several μm, to give way to a “dripping” state, resulting in much larger droplets. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by producing the first microfluidic silicone oil emulsions with a sub micron particle radius, and utilize these droplets to produce colloidal clusters.

Graphical abstract: Opposed flow focusing: evidence of a second order jetting transition

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
04 Apr 2018
Accepted
30 Sep 2018
First published
08 Oct 2018

Soft Matter, 2018,14, 8344-8351

Opposed flow focusing: evidence of a second order jetting transition

J. Dong, M. Meissner, M. A. Faers, J. Eggers, A. M. Seddon and C. P. Royall, Soft Matter, 2018, 14, 8344 DOI: 10.1039/C8SM00700D

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