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Updated: Jun 21, 2026

Fabricating High-viscosity Droplets using Microfluidic Capillary Device with Phase-inversion Co-flow Structure
Published on: April 17, 2018
Coarsening through directed droplet coalescence in fluid-fluid phase separation
Snigdha Thakur1, Pramod A Pullarkat, P B Sunil Kumar
1Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India.
Abstract:
Phase-separation dynamics of an asymmetric mixture of an isotropic dopant in a nematogenic fluid is presented. We show that, on steady cooling, the nucleating nematic drops move down the dopant concentration gradient, with a velocity that is dependent on the cooling rate and concentration gradient. This propulsion of the drops leads to a mechanism of droplet coarsening, where radius of a drop scales with time as R(t) approximately t. Various mechanisms for droplet propulsion are discussed.
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