Journal
MICROMACHINES
Volume 10, Issue 12, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/mi10120808
Keywords
oil viscosity; T-junction droplet generator; droplet generation rate; droplet size
Categories
Funding
- Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) Start up grant
- Shenzhen research grants [JCYJ20170817104516358, JCYJ20180504165801830]
- Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials under Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning [NK217F, NK222G]
- National Research Council of Science & Technology (NST), Republic of Korea [NK222G, NK217F] Funding Source: Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI), National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS)
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There have been growing interests in droplet-based microfluidics due to its capability to outperform conventional biological assays by providing various advantages, such as precise handling of liquid/cell samples, fast reaction time, and extremely high-throughput analysis/screening. The droplet-based microfluidics utilizes the interaction between the interfacial tension and the fluidic shear force to break continuous fluids into uniform-sized segments within a microchannel. In this paper, the effect of different viscosities of carrier oil on water-in-oil emulsion, particularly how droplet size and droplet generation rate are affected, has been investigated using a commonly used T-junction microfluidic droplet generator design connected to a pressure-controlled pump. We have tested mineral oils with four different viscosities (5, 7, 10, and 15 cSt) to compare the droplet generation under five different flow pressure conditions (i.e., water flow pressure of 30-150 mbar and oil flow pressure of 40-200 mbar). The results showed that regardless of the flow pressure levels, the droplet size decreased as the oil viscosity increased. Average size of the droplets decreased by approximately 32% when the viscosity of the oil changed from 5 to 15 cSt at the flow pressure of 30 mbar for water and 40 mbar for oil. Interestingly, a similar trend was observed in the droplet generation rate. Droplet generation rate and the oil viscosity showed high linear correlation (R-2 = 0.9979) at the water flow pressure 30 mbar and oil flow pressure 40 mbar.
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