title: The effect of interfacial tension on droplet formation in flow-focusing microfluidic device.
abstract: Interfacial tension plays an important role in microfluidic emulsification, which is the process of preparing emulsions. A promising method which controls droplet behavior according to the function of the interfacial tension in the process of microfluidic emulsification is reported. The droplet size and generation frequency changed regularly to obtain appropriate concentrations of surfactant. This method could be of great help for setting up the size-controllable droplet generation systems, and ameliorating the emulsification technology. The interfacial tension effect was first analyzed by computational simulation before the real experiment, which significantly improved the efficiency of the whole research process.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Artificial Micro- and Nano-Structures of Ministry of Education, Department of Physics, School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
authors.forename: Lu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Shi-shang
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xing-zhong
authors.initials: XZ
authors.lastname: Zhao
mesh_terms: D057446:Hydrodynamics; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013500:Surface Tension; D013501:Surface-Active Agents / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D013501:Surface-Active Agents