The fabrication of glass capillary microfluidic devices is technically challenging, often hampering use of the design. We describe a new technique, based on commercially available components, for assembling flow focusing capillary devices that can readily be taken apart and cleaned between uses. This design strategy allows for generation of both water-in-oil and oil-in-water emulsions in the sa...

Dispersed systems such as emulsions and suspensions are encountered in a large variety of applications areas such as food, cosmetics, pharmaceutics and polymers. To obtain the desired performance of an emulsion the dispersing process, i.e. droplet size distribution has to be monitored and controlled. By combining droplet generation, deformation and fixation in one experimental set-up we aim to ...

During the process of thermal spray coating, molten powders are sprayed and deposited on substrates to generate protective coatings. It is essential to have a clear understanding of the physics of droplet impingement on the surface of substrates for better control of the generation of splats and the structure of coating. A numerical model is developed in this paper to simulate the dynamics of t...

Gas turbine systems with wet compression have a potential for future power generation, since they can offer a high efficiency and a high specific power with a relatively low cost. In this study influence of ambient condition on the performance of the wet compression process is investigated with a non-equilibrium analytical modeling based on droplet evaporation. Transient behaviors of droplet di...

Droplet-based fluidics is emerging as a powerful platform for single cell analysis, directed evolution of enzymes, and high throughput screening studies. Due to the small amounts of compound compartmentalized in each droplet, detection has been primarily by fluorescence. To extend the range of experiments that can be carried out in droplets, we have developed the use of electrospray ionization ...

The maximum entropy principle (MEP), which has been popular in the modeling of droplet size and velocity distribution in sprays, is, strictly speaking, only applicable for isolated systems in thermodynamic equilibrium; whereas the spray formation processes are irreversible and non-isolated with interaction between the atomizing liquid and its surrounding gas medium. In this study, a new model f...

Composite microsystems that integrate mechanical and fluidic components are fast emerging as the next generation of system-on-chip designs. As these systems become widespread in safety-critical biomedical applications, dependability emerges as a critical performance parameter. In this paper, we present a costeffective concurrent test methodology for droplet-based microelectrofluidic systems. We...

Microfluidics, especially droplet microfluidics, attracts more and more researchers from diverse fields, because it requires fewer materials and less time, produces less waste and has the potential of highly integrated and computer-controlled reaction processes for chemistry and biology. Electrorheological fluid, especially giant electrorheological fluid (GERF), which is considered as a kind of...

Generating droplets of uniform volume is essential for the digital microfluidics systems, which use droplets as basic fluidic units. Recently we have shown that high uniformity (±%2) can be achieved by new firing sequence [1]. We have also confirmed accurate on-chip capacitive measurement of droplet volumes [1,2]. In the current paper, we develop feedback control system to defeat the random unc...

We introduce an effective method to actively induce droplet generation using negative pressure. Droplets can be generated on demand using a series of periodic negative pressure pulses. Fluidic network models were developed using the analogy to electric networks to relate the pressure conditions for different flow regimes. Experimental results show that the droplet volume is correlated to the pr...