Perfectly Monodisperse Microbubbling by Capillary Flow Focusing
Abstract
Here we report a simple microfluidics phenomenon which allows the efficient mass production of micron size gas bubbles with a perfectly monodisperse and controllable diameter. It resorts on a self-excited breakup phenomenon (which locks at a certain frequency) of a short gas microligament coflowing in a focused liquid stream. In this work, we describe the physics of the phenomenon and obtain closed expressions for the bubble diameter as a function of the liquid and gas properties, geometry, and flow parameters, from a large set of experimental results.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- December 2001
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.274501
- Bibcode:
- 2001PhRvL..87A4501G