Snap-off production of monodisperse droplets

TL;DR

This paper presents a simple, versatile snap-off technique for producing highly uniform monodisperse droplets with minimal polydispersity, adaptable over a wide flow rate range, and capable of generating very small droplets down to 2.5 micrometers.

Contribution

The authors introduce a novel, cost-effective snap-off method for creating monodisperse droplets with less than 1% polydispersity, maintaining consistent size across large flow rate variations.

Findings

Droplets have polydispersity <1%.

Droplet size remains constant over 100-fold flow rate change.

Droplet size can be continuously adjusted at higher flow rates.

Abstract

We introduce a novel technique to produce monodisperse droplets through the snap-off mechanism. The methodology is simple, versatile, and requires no specialized or expensive components. The droplets produced have polydispersity <1% and can be as small as 2.5 $\mu$m radius. A convenient feature is that the droplet size is constant over a 100-fold change in flow rate, while at higher flows the droplet size can be continuously adjusted.