The nature of chemical reaction-driven tip-streaming

The discovery of chemical reaction-driven tip-streaming (also known as “an amazing drop”) was made about a decade ago during measurements of the dynamic interfacial tension of a water-alkali pendant droplet immersed in oil-linoleic acid. A plausible explanation for this self-sustained ejection of micron sized droplets from the tip of the macroscopic pendant drop was offered at that time and attributed to Marangoni stresses driving the reaction-produced surfactant along the interface. Later, asymptotic theory based on the analysis of a complete fluid dynamical formulation supported this hypothesis. As this discovery promised a way of microdroplet generation without the need for complex microchannel geometries or externally imposed flow or electric fields, we were recently motivated to study the influence of the reagent concentrations and reaction rate on the droplet generation. However, in an attempt to recreate the original experiments, we revealed that the cause for tip-streaming is not what it originally seemed to be. This led to a series of experiments clarifying the role of the Marangoni stresses and the crucial differences from similar phenomena. As the mechanism by which the phenomenon was originally thought to operate was supported by recent theoretical studies, the present work leads to new intriguing questions of existence and conditions under which a chemical reaction alone can drive Marangoni stresses capable of self-sustaining the process of tip-streaming. VC 2013 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4802497]