Formation of Liquid Droplets in a Microchannel Network for Microreactor Applications

摘要

A novel method has been presented for preparing micro droplets using a branch connection in a microchannel network. With oil as the continuous phase and water as the dispersed phase, pico/nanoliter-sized water droplets can be generated in a continuous phase flow at a T-junction. The relationship between droplet size, flow speed, and channel size has been studied. For given experimental parameters, regular-sized droplets are reproducibly formed at a uniform speed. The diameter of generated droplets is controllable in the range from 40μm to 400 μm as the flow velocity of the continuous phase is varied from 0.01 m/s to 0.25 m/s. This method is applicable to a preparation step of aqueous samples/reagents in a micro chemical analysis system (μTAS), production of micro reactors using droplets, micromixing processes, and so on.