Séminaire

Mardi 17 Janvier 2017 à 11h00.

Microfluidic generation, characterisation and optical sculpture of ultra-deformable droplets

''The generation and manipulation of monodisperse droplets in the atto- to nanolitre volume range within microfluidic environments have enabled a variety of applications, including the synthesis of advanced materials, on-chip diagnostics, drug screening and encapsulation. In this context, surfactants are an essential ingredient to stabilise the droplet interface and prevent droplet coalescence. In this talk, it will be discussed how carefully chosen surfactants can reduce the interfacial tension of oil/water interfaces by several orders of magnitudes without compromising the interface stability. Such surfactants were used to create ultra-deformable micron-sized droplets with interfacial tensions as low as few hundreds nN/m. A microfluidic platform was developed to generate monodisperse populations of these droplets as well as to characterise their mechanical properties through the direct observation of the thermal capillary waves at droplet interface. Finally, optical fields were used to sculpt the droplet interface into user-defined complex shapes, thereby unlocking an exciting portfolio of potential technological applications, such as the synthesis of asymmetric solid particles and the formation of three-dimensional multiscale fluidic networks.''