Synthesis and characterization of hydrophobised magnetite nanoparticles for production of liquid marbles and modeling of liquid marble deformation under the gravity effect

Abstract

Liquid marbles are emerging discrete droplet microfluidic systems that are a simple alternative to conventional droplet microfluids encapsulated by hydrophobic nanoparticles or micro-particles. One of the most important applications of liquid marbles is their use in biochemistry, biomedicine, nanotechnology and so on. In this research, liquid marbles are studied in two parts of practical and simulation. In the practical part, for the production of liquid marbles, magnetite nanoparticles are first synthesized and hydrophobised with paraffin wax. In the next step, using a micropipette, a droplet of water is placed on the nanoparticles and by tilting the surface, it is rolled on the nanoparticles, which finally forms a "liquid marble". Finally, the opening and closing of the powdery shell studied using a magnetic field induced by a fixed magnet. In the simulation section, by modelling the marble with an elastic shell around the droplet, the effect of the gravitational force on it, was examined and it was observed that the simulation results show well agreement with the practical part.

Keywords

• surface tension
• liquid marble
• magnetic field
• finite element method
• modelling
• nanoparticle synthesis