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Capillary‐Based Microfluidics—Coflow, Flow‐Focusing, Electro‐Coflow, Drops, Jets, and Instabilities
Author(s) -
Guerrero Josefa,
Chang YaWen,
Fragkopoulos Alexandros A.,
FernandezNieves Alberto
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
small
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.785
H-Index - 236
eISSN - 1613-6829
pISSN - 1613-6810
DOI - 10.1002/smll.201904344
Subject(s) - breakup , microfluidics , drop (telecommunication) , capillary action , surface tension , flow focusing , mechanics , materials science , nanotechnology , scaling , flow (mathematics) , current (fluid) , physics , mechanical engineering , thermodynamics , engineering , composite material , geometry , mathematics
Capillary‐based microfluidics is a great technique to produce monodisperse and complex emulsions and particulate suspensions. In this review, the current understanding of drop and jet formation in capillary‐based microfluidic devices for two primary flow configurations, coflow and flow‐focusing is summarized. The experimental and theoretical description of fluid instabilities is discussed and conditions for controlled drop breakup in different modes of drop generation are provided. Current challenges in drop breakup with low interfacial tension systems and recent progress in overcoming drop size limitations using electro‐coflow are addressed. In each scenario, the physical mechanisms for drop breakup are revisited, and simple scaling arguments proposed in the literature are introduced.