Eur. Phys. J. E (2015) 38: 138
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2015-15138-8

Tips and Tricks

Snap-off production of monodisperse droplets

¹ Department of Physics & Astronomy and the Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
² Department of Physics, Emory University, 30322, Atlanta, GA, USA
³ PCT Lab, UMR CNRS 7083 Gulliver, ESPCI ParisTech, PSL Research University, Paris, France

^* e-mail: dalnoki@mcmaster.ca

Received: 6 May 2015
Accepted: 30 July 2015
Published online: 28 December 2015

Abstract

We introduce a novel technique to produce monodisperse droplets through the snap-off mechanism. The methodology is simple, versatile, and requires no specialized or expensive components. The droplets produced have polydispersity < 1% and can be as small as 2.5μm radius. A convenient feature is that the droplet size is constant over a 100-fold change in flow rate, while at higher flows the droplet size can be continuously adjusted.