Abstract
To precisely control the size of droplets is of great importance for the applications of the droplet microfluidics. In a flow-focusing microdroplet generator, the pressure-driven microfluidic device is designed to control the flow rates of the fluids. For a specific geometry of the flow-focusing microchannel, a mathematical model of droplet formation is established, and the nonlinear relation between the droplet length and the driven-pressure ratio can be described by our model. For pressure-driven microfluidic flows, the nonlinear relation between the droplet length and the driving-pressure ratio is measured experimentally in the flow-focusing microchannel. Particularly, by using the closed-loop control method of droplet generation, good agreements are shown between the measured size of droplets and the predicted size of the droplets. As a result, the control precision of the droplet size can be increased drastically by the closed-loop control method of droplet generation. Consequently, monodisperse droplets of extremely small size can be produced in the flow-focusing microdroplet generator.
| Original language | English |
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| Article number | 032009 |
| Journal | Physics of Fluids |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Mar 2024 |