Related papers: Thermocapillary valve for droplet production and s…
Microfluidics has revolutionized control over small volumes through the use of physical barriers. However, the rigidity of these barriers limits flexibility in applications. We present an optofluidic toolbox that leverages structured light…
Compact and robust structures to precisely control and acquire atomic spectra are increasingly important for the pursuit of widespread applications. Sub-Doppler responses of thermal atoms are critical in constructing high-precision devices…
Ultrasound-driven microbubbles rectify oscillatory motion into strong steady streaming flow [1, 2]. In this fluid dynamics video, we show size-dependent trapping, focusing and sorting of microparticles, utilizing the interaction between…
Motion of chemically driven droplets is analyzed by applying a solvability condition of perturbed hydrodynamic equations affected by the adsorbate concentration. Conditions for traveling bifurcation analogous to a similar transition in…
Chip-scale atomic devices built around micro-fabricated alkali vapor cells are at the forefront of compact metrology and atomic sensors. We demonstrate a micro-fabricated vapor cell that is actively-pumped to ultra-high-vacuum (UHV) to…
We propose to drive open microfluidic systems by shear in a covering fluid layer, e.g., oil covering water-filled chemical channels. The advantages as compared to other means of pumping are simpler forcing and prevention of evaporation of…
A phase--field method is applied to the modeling of flow and breakup of droplets in a T--shaped junction in the hydrodynamic regime where capillary and viscous stresses dominate over inertial forces, which is characteristic of microfluidic…
Efficient mixing and pumping of liquids at the microscale is a technology that is still to be optimized. The combination of an AC electric field with a small temperature gradient leads to a strong electro-thermal flow that can be used for…
Microfluidics has enabled a revolution in the manipulation of small volumes of fluids. Controlling flows at larger scales and faster rates, or $\textit{macrofluidics}$, has broad applications but involves the unique complexities of inertial…
Transforming a laser beam into a mass flow has been a challenge both scientifically and technologically. Here we report the discovery of a new optofluidics principle and demonstrate the generation of a steady-state water flow by a pulsed…
The controllability of passive microparticles that are advected with the fluid flow generated by an actively controlled one is studied. The particles are assumed to be suspended in a viscous fluid and well separated so that the far-field…
Phase separation is the thermodynamic process that explains how droplets form in multicomponent fluids. These droplets can provide controlled compartments to localize chemical reactions, and reactions can also affect the droplets' dynamics.…
We describe a setup to perform systematic studies on the spreading of droplets of complex fluids under microgravity conditions. Tweaking the gravitational acceleration under which droplets are deposited provides access to different regimes…
Bubbles generated with lasers under confinement have been investigated for their potential use as the driving mechanism for liquid micro-jets in various microfluidic devices, such as needle free jet injectors. Here, we report on the study…
We present an experimental apparatus to control and visualize the response of a liquid target to a laser-induced vaporization. We use a millimeter-sized drop as target and present two liquid-dye solutions that allow a variation of the…
We present a method that leverages projected light patterns as a mechanism for freeform deformations of a thin liquid film via the thermocapillary effect. We developed a closed-form solution for the inverse problem of the thin-film…
Various microfluidic systems, such as chemical and biological lab-on-a-chip devices, involve motion of multiple droplets within an immersing fluid in shallow micro-channels. Modeling the dynamics of such systems requires calculation of the…
Capillary forces acting at the surface of a liquid drop can be strong enough to deform small objects and recent studies have provided several examples of elastic instabilities induced by surface tension. We present such an example where a…
We investigate how ferrofluid droplets suspended in a wall-bounded shear flow can organise when subjected to an external magnetic field. By tuning the magnitude of the external magnetic field, we find that the ferrofluid droplets form…
Tailored mixing inside individual droplets could be useful to ensure that reactions within microscopic discrete fluid volumes, which are used as microreactors in ``digital microfluidic'' applications, take place in a controlled fashion. In…