Interactions and deposition patterns of multiplexed electrosprays

Multiplexed electrospray is a promising aerosol technique to achieve both high throughput and unique advantages of the electrospray such as monodispersity and small droplet size down to nanometer range. Here we study the interaction and overall deposition pattern of multiplexed electrosprays. First, we derived an approximate model for the profile of a single electrospray subjected to its own space charge field as well as external driving electric field. Then the spray profile model was generalized to describe the deposition pattern for multiple electrosprays. Numerically, we investigated the interaction of charged droplets generated by up to 91 electrospray sources using a full Lagrangian model. The highly intensive computational load was successfully handled by implementing the numerical code on a desktop supercomputer with 10 Tera FLOPS of computational power delivered by Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). The results from the spray profile model and numerical simulation were compared to experimental data and good agreements were demonstrated. The simplicity of the spray profile model can conveniently guide the design and operation of multiplexed electrosprays for a range of promising applications. Published by Elsevier Ltd.