6533b85ffe1ef96bd12c276d

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Oil-in-Water fL Droplets by Interfacial Spontaneous Fragmentation and Their Electrical Characterization

F CavaleriBruno PignataroAdele De NinnoGiuseppe ArrabitoVittorio FerraraVito ErricoFederica Caselli

subject

Materials scienceFabricationSettore ING-IND/34Femtoliter02 engineering and technologySurfaces and Interfaces010402 general chemistry021001 nanoscience & nanotechnologyCondensed Matter PhysicsInkjet printing Plateau–Rayleigh instability electrical impedance lab-on-chip01 natural sciences0104 chemical sciencesMicroelectrodeChemical engineeringFragmentation (mass spectrometry)Pulmonary surfactantOil dropletEmulsionElectrochemistryWeber numberGeneral Materials Science0210 nano-technologySpectroscopy

description

Inkjet printing is here employed for the first time as a method to produce femtoliter-scale oil droplets dispersed in water. In particular, picoliter-scale fluorinated oil (FC40) droplets are printed in the presence of perfluoro-1-octanol surfactant at a velocity higher than 5 m/s. Femtoliter-scale oil droplets in water are spontaneously formed through a fragmentation process at the water/air interface using minute amounts of nonionic surfactant (down to 0.003% v/v of Tween 80). This fragmentation occurs by a Plateau-Rayleigh mechanism at a moderately high Weber number (10(1)). A microfluidic chip with integrated microelectrodes allows droplets characterization in terms of number and diameter distribution (peaked at about 3 mu m) by means of electrical impedance measurements. These results show an unprecedented possibility to scale oil droplets down to the femtoliter scale, which opens up several perspectives for a tailored oil-in-water emulsion preparations, and cellular biology. fabrication for drug encapsulation, pharmaceutic preparations, and cellular biology.

yearjournalcountryeditionlanguage
2019-03-15
10.1021/acs.langmuir.8b04316http://hdl.handle.net/10447/349776