Hydrophilic polycarbonate chips for generation of oil-in-water (O/W) and water-in-oil-in-water (W/O/W) emulsions

Simulations of centrifugal microfluidic droplet formation using two-phase level set method

“…Mass production of highly monodispersed emulsions in a controlled manner is desirable. There have been many microfluidic methods reported that can produce highly monodispersed emulsions [2,3]. It is still challenged in mass production due to the conventionally used syringe pump actuation.…”

Droplet Microfluidics as a Tool for the Generation of Granular Matters and Functional Emulsions

“…glass) or hydrophobic (e.g. PDMS), but modification of the surface is still needed in order to i) further increase or decrease the contact angle between the solid of the channel walls and the working fluids (Jankowski et al, 2013); ii) pattern the device with hydrophobic (or hydrophilic) areas in order to, e.g. produce multiple droplets (Abate et al, 2010b;Kim S.C. et al, 2015); iii) shield the microchannel walls from the deposition of unwanted molecules and from the intake of swelling solvents (Abate et al, 2008;Lee et al, 2003;Zhou et al, 2012); or to iv) increase the adherence of the mammalian cells to the solid substrate (Zuchowska et al, 2016).…”

“…To modify the thermoplastics permanently, the surface needs to be physically or chemically modified by, e.g. the layer-by-layer deposition of the polyanions and polycations on a polycarbonate (Derzsi et al, 2011), coating polycarbonate with either a hydrophilic or hydrophobic compound (Jankowski and Garstecki, 2016;Jankowski et al, 2012Jankowski et al, , 2013, sequential photografting of poly(ethylene glycol) on COC (Stachowiak et al, 2007), or by deposition of silica nanoparticles on PMMA (Ortiz et al, 2017).…”

“…W/O emulsions, or any multiple emulsion with oil as the outer phase, are made in hydrophobic devices . O/W or any multiple emulsions with an aqueous outer phase are formed in hydrophilic devices (Derzsi et al, 2011;Jankowski et al, 2013).…”

Microfluidic methods to study emulsion formation

“…When the contact angle is around 90° there is no preferential wetting which results in a parallel flow (Chen et al 2012;Shui et al 2009). The wettability of the channels can be changed by surface modification (Silvestrini et al 2012;Jankowski et al 2013), and by surfactants;…”