Study on flow-focusing microfluidic device with external electric field for droplet generation

Abstract

In the recent years, microfluidics droplet has attracted remarkable research attention and has been applied in a variety of fields such as emulsion, drug encapsulation, chemical mixing. This work presents a prototype for a flow-focusing microfluidics device which is utilized to produce micro-droplet. The simulations were carried out in order to study and validate the drop generation and the effect of different factors on this process. The results show that the droplet break up process was controlled by manipulating the flow rate and external electric field. The experiments were conducted and the droplets were successfully formed and observed. These results are the necessary foundation to produce desired droplets in doing experiments in the future.