micromachines-08-00075.pdf (8.75 MB)
Microfluidic production of multiple emulsions
journal contribution
posted on 2017-03-23, 11:30 authored by Goran VladisavljevicGoran Vladisavljevic, Ruqaya Al Nuumani, Seyed Ali NabaviMicrofluidic devices are promising tools for the production of monodispersed tuneable complex emulsions. This review highlights the advantages of microfluidics for the fabrication of emulsions and presents an overview of the microfluidic emulsification methods including two-step and single-step methods for the fabrication of high-order multiple emulsions (double, triple, quadruple and quintuple) and emulsions with multiple and/or multi-distinct inner cores. The microfluidic methods for the formation of multiple emulsion drops with ultra-thin middle phase, multi-compartment jets, and Janus and ternary drops composed of two or three distinct surface regions are also presented. Different configurations of microfluidic drop makers are covered, such as co-flow, T-junctions and flow focusing (both planar and three-dimensional (3D)). Furthermore, surface modifications of microfluidic channels and different modes of droplet generation are summarized. Non-confined microfluidic geometries used for buoyancy-driven drop generation and membrane integrated microfluidics are also discussed. The review includes parallelization and drop splitting strategies for scaling up microfluidic emulsification. The productivity of a single drop maker is typically <1 mL/h; thus, more than 1000 drop makers are needed to achieve commercially relevant droplet throughputs of >1 L/h, which requires combining drop makers into twodimensional (2D) and 3D assemblies fed from a single set of inlet ports through a network of distribution and collection channels.
Funding
Ruqaya Al Nuumani holds a scholarship from “the Government of the Sultanate of Oman”.
History
School
- Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Department
- Chemical Engineering
Published in
MicromachinesVolume
8Issue
3Pages
1 - 1 (34)Citation
VLADISAVLJEVIC, G.T., AL NUUMANI, R. and NABAVI, S.A., 2017. Microfluidic production of multiple emulsions. Micromachines, 8 (3), 75.Publisher
© The Authors. Published by MDPI.Version
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/Acceptance date
2017-02-24Publication date
2017-03-02Copyright date
2017Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by MDPI under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ISSN
2072-666XPublisher version
Language
- en