This article describes the process of formation of droplets and bubbles in microfluidic T-junction geometries. At low capillary numbers break-up is not dominated by shear stresses: experimental results support the assertion that the dominant contribution to the dynamics of break-up arises from the pressure drop across the emerging droplet or bubble. This pressure drop results from the high resistance to flow of the continuous (carrier) fluid in the thin films that separate the droplet from the walls of the microchannel when the droplet fills almost the entire cross-section of the channel. A simple scaling relation, based on this assertion, predicts the size of droplets and bubbles produced in the T-junctions over a range of rates of flow of the two immiscible phases, the viscosity of the continuous phase, the interfacial tension, and the geometrical dimensions of the device.

This paper derives the difference in pressure between the beginning and the end of a rectangular microchannel through which a flowing liquid (water, with or without surfactant, and mixtures of water and glycerol) carries bubbles that contact all four walls of the channel. It uses an indirect method to derive the pressure in the channel. The pressure drop depends predominantly on the number of bubbles in the channel at both low and high concentrations of surfactant. At intermediate concentrations of surfactant, if the channel contains bubbles (of the same or different lengths), the total, aggregated length of the bubbles in the channel is the dominant contributor to the pressure drop. The difference between these two cases stems from increased flow of liquid through the ''gutters''-the regions of the system bounded by the curved body of the bubble and the corners of the channel-in the presence of intermediate concentrations of surfactant. This paper presents a systematic and quantitative investigation of the influence of surfactants on the flow of fluids in microchannels containing bubbles. It derives the contributions to the overall pressure drop from three regions of the channel: (i) the slugs of liquid between the bubbles (and separated from the bubbles), in which liquid flows as though no bubbles were present; (ii) the gutters along the corners of the microchannels; and (iii) the curved caps at the ends of the bubble.

Droplets of one liquid suspended in a second, immiscible liquid move through a microfluidic device in which a channel splits into two branches that reconnect downstream. The droplets choose a path based on the number of droplets that occupy each branch. The interaction among droplets in the channels results in complex sequences of path selection. The linearity of the flow through the microchannels, however, ensures that the behavior of the system can be reversed. This reversibility makes it possible to encrypt and decrypt signals coded in the intervals between droplets. The encoding/decoding device is a functional microfluidic system that requires droplets to navigate a network in a precise manner without the use of valves, switches, or other means of external control.