Abstract
Monodisperse microscale drops formed with microfluidic devices are useful for encapsulating cells, microgel particles, or even additional drops. These techniques are thus useful for applications ranging from high-throughput biology to monodisperse particle and capsule synthesis, which require encapsulation of such objects. However, it is challenging to efficiently encapsulate the objects in all drops; often, the objects are encapsulated inefficiently, resulting in many improperly filled, unusable drops. Here, we describe a phenomenon that allows very efficient encapsulation. We use the inflow of the object to plug the drop maker nozzle; the continued injection of the outer phase pinches off a drop, thereby encapsulating the object; this yields precisely one object encapsulated per drop.
- Received 22 January 2011
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.84.031502
©2011 American Physical Society