Predicting evaporation rates of droplet arrays

The evaporation of multiple sessile droplets is both scientifically interesting and practically important, occurring in many natural and industrial applications. Although there are simple analytic expressions to predict evaporation rates of single droplets, there are no such frameworks for general configurations of droplets of arbitrary size, contact angle or spacing. However, a recent theoretical contribution by Masoud, Howell & Stone (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 927, 2021, R4) shows how considerable insight can be gained into the evaporation of arbitrary configurations of droplets without having either to obtain the solution for the concentration of vapour in the atmosphere or to perform direct numerical simulations of the full problem. The theoretical predictions show excellent agreement with simulations for all configurations, only deviating by 25 % for the most confined droplets.

Microfluidic Device for Droplet Pairing by Combining Droplet Railing and Floating Trap Arrays

Droplet microfluidics are characterized by the generation and manipulation of discrete volumes of solutions, generated with the use of immiscible phases. Those droplets can then be controlled, transported, analyzed or their content modified. In this wide droplet microfluidic toolbox, no means are available to generate, in a controlled manner, droplets co-encapsulating to aqueous phases. Indeed, current methods rely on random co-encapsulation of two aqueous phases during droplet generation or the merging of two random droplets containing different aqueous phases. In this study, we present a novel droplet microfluidic device to reliably and efficiently co-encapsulate two different aqueous phases in micro-droplets. In order to achieve this, we combined existing droplet microfluidic modules in a novel way. The different aqueous phases are individually encapsulated in droplets of different sizes. Those droplet populations are then filtered in order to position each droplet type towards its adequate trapping compartment in traps of a floating trap array. Single droplets, each containing a different aqueous phase, are thus paired and then merged. This pairing at high efficiency is achieved thanks to a unique combination of floating trap arrays, a droplet railing system and a droplet size-based filtering mechanism. The microfluidic chip design presented here provides a filtering threshold with droplets larger than 35 μm (big droplets) being deviated to the lower rail while droplets smaller than 20 μm (small droplets) remain on the upper rail. The effects of the rail height and the distance between the two (upper and lower) rails were investigated. The optimal trap dimensions provide a trapping efficiency of 100% for small and big droplets with a limited double trapping (both compartments of the traps filled with the same droplet type) of 5%. The use of electrocoalescence enables the generation of a droplet while co-encapsulating two aqueous phases. Using the presented microfluidic device libraries of 300 droplets, dual aqueous content can be generated in less than 30 min.

A Specifically Designed Injector for Controlled Lube Oil Addition in View of Investigation of Pre-Ignition Phenomena in Dual–Fuel/Gas Engines

Internal combustion engines will continue to play a role during a transitional phase, especially in heavy-duty or marine applications. In this context, lean-burn gas/dual-fuel combustion is an attractive concept to reduce CO2, combined with considerably lower particulate and NOX pollution, and with efficiencies comparable to diesel combustion. However, ignition processes still pose considerable challenges, with pre-ignition in particular being a major issue. The underlying mechanisms are probably based on self-ignition of lube oil in hot zones. In order to investigate fundamentals of such phenomena in optically accessible test rigs, a novel injector was specifically developed to induce pre-ignitions artificially. The so-called “PieZo-Droplet-Injector” (PZDI) enables dosing of minor amounts of lubricating oil or even the injection of single droplets with diameters in the range of 100–200 µm. The working principle relies on a needle actuated with a piezo stack, which pushes a certain amount of lube oil in a bore so that (even single) droplets can be ejected through an adjustable nozzle. To confirm the PZDI functionality and to investigate droplet characteristics based on adjustable operating parameters, tests were performed under ambient conditions as well as in a constant volume combustion chamber under reasonable pressure and temperature conditions. Overall, the PZDI showed an excellent behavior in terms of capabilities to inject small amounts or even single droplets of lube oil. At last, this specially developed injector allows selective lube oil addition in an optically accessible engine test facility for upcoming examination of pre-ignition phenomena under real operating conditions.

Influence of Hydrophilic Surfactants on the W1–W2 Coalescence in Double Emulsion Systems Investigated by Single Droplet Experiments

Double emulsions are a promising formulation for encapsulation and targeted release in pharmaceutics, cosmetics and food. An inner water phase is dispersed in an oil phase, which is again emulsified in a second water phase. The encapsulated inner water phase can be released via diffusion or via coalescence, neither of which is desired during storage but might be intended during application. The two interfaces in a double emulsion are stabilized by a hydrophilic and a lipophilic surfactant, to prevent the coalescence of the outer and the inner emulsion, respectively. This study focuses on the influence of the hydrophilic surfactant on the release of inner water or actives encapsulated therein via coalescence of the inner water droplet with the outer O–W2 interface. Since coalescence and diffusion are difficult to distinguish in double emulsions, single-droplet experiments were used to quantify differences in the stability of inner droplets. Different lipophilic (PGPH and PEG-30 dipolyhydroxylstearate) and hydrophilic surfactants (ethoxylates, SDS and polymeric) were used and resulted in huge differences in stability. A drastic decrease in stability was found for some combinations, while other combinations resulted in inner droplets that could withstand coalescence longer. The destabilization effect of some hydrophilic surfactants depended on their concentration, but was still present at very low concentrations. A huge spread of the coalescence time for multiple determinations was observed for all formulations and the necessary statistical analysis is discussed in this work. The measured stabilities of single droplets are in good accordance with the stability of double emulsions for similar surfactant combinations found in literature. Therefore, single droplet experiments are suggested for a fast evaluation of potentially suitable surfactant combinations for future studies on double-emulsion stability.

Dual sequentially addressable dielectrophoretic array for high-throughput, scalable, multiplexed droplet sorting

Droplet microfluidics is a powerful tool for a diverse range of biomedical and industrial applications such as single-cell biology, synthetic biology, digital PCR, biosafety monitoring, drug screening, and food, feed, and cosmetic industries. As an integral part of droplet microfluidics, on-chip multiplexed droplet sorting has recently gained enthusiasm, since it enables real-time sorting of single droplets containing cells with different phenotypes into multiple bins. However, conventional sorting methods are limited in throughput and scalability. Here, we present high-throughput, scalable, multiplexed droplet sorting by employing a pair of sequentially addressable dielectrophoretic arrays (SADAs) across a microchannel on a microfluidic chip. A SADA is an on-chip array of electrodes, each of which is sequentially activated and deactivated in synchronization to the position and speed of a flowing droplet of interest. The dual-SADA (dSADA) structure enables high-throughput deflection of droplets in multiple directions in a well-controlled manner. For proof-of-concept demonstration and characterization of the dSADA, we performed fluorescence-activated droplet sorting (FADS) with a 3-way dSADA at a high throughput of 2450 droplets/s. Furthermore, to show the scalability of the dSADA, we also performed FADS with a 5-way dSADA at a high throughput of 473 droplets/s.