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Updated: Oct 22, 2025
Generation of Size-controlled Poly ethylene Glycol Diacrylate Droplets via Semi-3-Dimensional Flow Focusing Microfluidic Devices
Published on: July 3, 2018
Experimental studies on droplet characteristics in a microfluidic flow focusing droplet generator: effect of
Sangam Srikanth1,2, Sushil Raut3, Satish Kumar Dubey1,2
1MEMS, Microfluidics and Nanoelectronics Lab, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, Hyderabad, 500078, India.
Abstract:
The efficacy of droplet-based microfluidic assays depends on droplet size, pattern, generation rate, etc. The size of the droplet is affected by numerous variables as flow rate ratio, viscosity ratio, microchannel geometry, surfactants, nature of fluids and other dimensionless numbers. This work reports rigorous analysis and optimization of the behavior of droplets with change in flow rate ratio and viscosity ratio in a flow-focusing device. Droplets were produced for different flow rate ratios maintaining a constant aqueous phase and varying the continuous phase, to have capillary numbers ranging from 0.01 to 0.1. It was observed that the droplet size decreased with the increase in flow rate ratio, and vice versa. It was noted that as the viscosity ratio was increased, the dispersed phase elongated before the complete breakup and long droplets were formed in the microchannel. Smaller droplets were formed for lower viscosity ratios with a combination of higher flow rate ratios. An empirical relation has been developed to predict the droplet length in terms of capillary number and flow rate ratio for different viscosity ratios. In addition, microparticle encapsulation in individual droplets was attempted to realize the effect of flow rate of the continuous phase for various flow rate ratios on encapsulation efficiency.
