Synthesis of scalable micro-spheres by Plateau-Rayleigh instability

Abstract

In the field of the fabrication of micro- and nano-spheres, the phenomenon of Plateau-Rayleigh instability has drawn more and more attention. This surface tension-driven instability in two immiscible fluids can be used to generate uniformly size micro- and nano-spheres by imposing an external mechanical excitation. In this article, we mainly adopt numerical simulation method to study the effects of wavelength, viscosity and surface tension on Plateau-Rayleigh instability. In addition, a micro-spheres generation system based on controlling the breakup process of the co-flowing jet is studied. The numerical results show that the current method can efficiently control the size of the micro-spheres from a variety of fluids. Also, the effects of amplitude and frequency of the excitation during the fabrication process on the size of micro-spheres are investigated.