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Flow focusing is providing new tools in Analytical Chemistry for its unique combination of simplicity, droplet size control just above the micrometer scale, and aerosol beam collimation. However, the most interesting droplet size range lies at the stability limit of the standard flow focusing operating mode. Nevertheless, that stability limit can be forced down to produce jets on the submicrometer scale by underpinning the cone-like meniscus at the tip of a hypodermic needle. Using a nebulizer design based on that concept, we show that the flow focusing steady jetting regime extends down to the limit imposed by the instability of jet itself, even for Reynolds numbers as low as 10 −2 . This stability enhancement leads to droplet sizes well below those previously obtained with flow focusing. In this work, we experimentally determine the influence on the jet's radius of the liquid flow rate and viscosity, as well as the focusing orifice. We analyze the instability mechanisms that impose the minimum values of the issued flow rate and jet's size. Finally, the jet's breakup and the size of the resulting micron-sized droplets are examined from high-speed optical imaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production of viscoelastic capillary jets with gaseous flow focusing is studied experimentally. In this technique, the liquid is injected at a constant flow rate through a feeding capillary located in front of the discharge orifice. A gas stream coflows with the jet across the orifice driven by a constant pressure drop. The gas stream sucks and drags the liquid, reducing the jet’s diameter well below the orifice diameter. Because of the rheological nature of the liquid, this focusing phenomenon differs from the Newtonian one in several regards. For given values of the polymer concentration, the injected flow rate, and the applied pressure drop, there is an interval of the capillary-to-orifice distance for which the jetting regime is reached. Outside that interval, the jet either suffers from the pull-out instability or breaks up before reaching the discharge orifice. Significant free surface oscillations can be observed in most of the jetting realizations. This oscillatory behavior is caused by a transient die swell effect which continuously appears right at the capillary exit. Ejection interrupts because the jet bulges to such an extent that the free surface pinches. Because of the stabilizing effect of the polymeric contribution to the axial stress, micrometer filaments with lengths up to 1 cm and Weber numbers on the order of 10 − 4 can be produced in front of the discharge orifice. The shear viscous stresses exerted on the emitted jet by the gas stream beyond the discharge orifice prevent the macromolecule recoiling. The resulting extensional viscosity inhibits the break-up process, and thus very long jets are produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel microfluidic technique has been recently proposed to produce quasi-monodisperse collections of microbubbles with a controlled size. In this technique, a gaseous stream is injected through a T-junction into a microchannel transporting a liquid current. The gas adheres to a hydrophobic strip printed on the channel surface. When the gas and liquid flow rates are set appropriately, a gaseous rivulet flows over that strip. The rivulet breaks up downstream due to a capillary pearling instability, which leads to a quasi-monodisperse collection of microbubbles. Motivated by this application, we here analyze the stability of both gas and liquid rivulets coflowing with a current in a quadrangular microfluidic channel. The results essentially differ from those of cylindrical jets because the contact-line-anchorage condition affects fundamentally the rivulet’s instability nature. The temporal stability analysis shows that the rivulet becomes unstable not only for (unperturbed) contact angles larger than 90° (as can be expected) but also for values smaller than that angle. Interestingly enough, the maximum growth factor exhibits a non-monotonic dependence with respect to the Reynolds number (i.e., the viscosities). In fact, there are intervals of that parameter where the fluid system becomes unstable, while all the perturbations are damped outside that interval. The gaseous rivulet does not stabilize as the Reynolds number decreases, which means that it can be unstable even in the Stokes limit and for contact angles less than 90°. In addition, the stability of a flowing liquid rivulet is not determined by its contact angle exclusively (as occurs in the static case), but by the Reynolds number as well. Liquid rivulets with contact angles less than 90° can be unstable for sufficiently high Reynolds numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]