Droplet Breakup with Unequal sized in Symmetric Y-junction Microchannel

Abstract

Droplet based microfluidic systems have found versatile industrial and scientific applications, like biological engineering, lab-on-chip, drug delivery, and encapsulation. In the current study, the breakup of mother droplets in a symmetric Y-junction microchannel under an electric field is numerically investigated. To this approach, a 2D numerical model base on the level set method is performed by the COMSOL Multi-physics software. Two methods for applying the electric field are considered: a symmetric and an asymmetric electric field. In the symmetric electric field, it is observed that the mother droplet splits faster in the presence of an electric field when compared with the case without the electric field. Also, the mother droplet is divided into two daughter droplets with equal sizes. For the asymmetric electric field, the results reveal that the mother droplet splits into two daughter droplets with unequal sizes. Furthermore, a novel flow pattern called hybrid pattern is determined in the asymmetric splitting of droplets. In addition, there is a critical electric capillary number above which a non-splitting pattern.

Keywords

• two-phase flow
• symmetric y-junction microchannel
• comsol software
• level set method