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Control of serial microfluidic droplet size gradient by step-wise ramping of flow rates

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Abstract

This paper describes a method to control and detect droplet size gradient by step-wise flow rate ramping of water-in-oil droplets in a microfluidic device. The droplets are generated in a cross channel device with two oil inlets and a water inlet. The droplet images are captured and analyzed in a time sequence in order to quantify the droplet generation frequency. It is demonstrated that by controlling the ramping of the oil flow rates it is possible to manipulate the ramping of droplet sizes. Increasing or decreasing of droplet sizes is achieved for a step-wise triangular ramping profile of the oil flow rate. The dynamic behavior of droplets due to the step-wise flow pulses is investigated. Uniform linear size ramping of water-in-oil droplets from 73 to 83 μm in diameter is generated with an oil flow ramping range from 1 to 11 μL/min in a minimum of five steps while water flow rate is held constant at 2 μL/min.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge Lung-Hsin Hung and Wei-Yu Tseng, graduate students in the BioMINT lab, UC Irvine for helping with the fabrication, Daphne Collins, Brain Imaging Center, UCI for preliminary image analysis and start up funding from UCI. Startup funding from UC Irvine.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    John Collins & Abraham Phillip Lee

  2. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Abraham Phillip Lee

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  1. John Collins
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  2. Abraham Phillip Lee
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Correspondence to Abraham Phillip Lee.

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Collins, J., Lee, A.P. Control of serial microfluidic droplet size gradient by step-wise ramping of flow rates. Microfluid Nanofluid 3, 19–25 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-006-0093-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-006-0093-8

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