The paper is focused on the formation of hydroxyapatite nanoparticles (HAp) in polyelectrolyte-modified microemulsions, in a microemulsion template phase consisting of cyclohexane, water, cationic surfactant and cosurfactant, in the presence of Na-polyacrylate (PAA) as an anionic polyelectrolyte. It is shown that PAA, can be incorporated into the individual inverse microemulsion droplets. The m...

Emulsion polymerization reactions constitute complex, nonequilibrium systems in which there is strong interaction between polymers, monomers, and the colloidal structures that mediate the reactions. A novel and general method was sought to monitor emulsion polymerization reactions. Instrumentation and methods were hence developed here to achieve, for the first time, simultaneous monitoring of t...

In this work, the combination of droplet-based microfluidics with liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) was achieved, for providing a fast separation and high-information-content detection method for the analysis of nanoliter-scale droplets with complex compositions. A novel interface method was developed using an oil-covered droplet array chip to couple with an LC/MS system via a cap...

In this study, a membrane-integrated glass capillary device for preparing small-sized water-in-oil-in-water (W/O/W) emulsion droplets is demonstrated. The concept of integrating microfluidics to prepare precise structure-controlled double emulsion droplets with the membrane emulsification technique provides a simple method for preparing small-sized and structure-controlled double emulsion dropl...

In this paper we tackle a critical issue in the numerical modeling, by Eulerian moment methods, of polydisperse multiphase systems, constituted of dispersed particles or droplets, a general class of systems which include aerosols. Their modeling starts at a mesoscopic scale with an equation on the number density function NDF of particles/droplets which satisfies a population balance equation. (...

A drying multi-component liquid droplet in a confined geometry leaves uniform dried pattern. The evaporated vapors are stagnated inside the closed chamber, which induce Marangoni effects that contribute to suppress coffee-ring

We report the generation and manipulation of electrorheological (ER) droplets that exhibit the giant ER effect. The experiments were carried out on specially designed microfluidic chips, in which the ER droplets were generated by using the microfluidic flow-focusing approach. Both the size and formation rate of these droplets can be controlled through digitally applied electrical signals. The p...

Proper estimation of droplet growth rate plays a crucial role on appropriate prediction of supersonic separators performance for separation of fine droplets from a gas stream. Up to now, all available researches employ empirical or semi-empirical correlations to define the relationship between droplet growth rate (dr/dt) and other operating variables such as temperatures (T and TL), Pressure (P...