Investigation of Temperature-Dependent Droplet Formation of Nanofluids in Microfluidic T-Junction Available to Purchase

The study on the control of microdroplet formation and manipulation is very important due to the potential applications of droplet-based microfluidics in various important fields. Experimental investigations on thermally controlled droplet formation and size manipulation of deionized water and nanofluids in a microfluidic T-junction are reported in this paper. The heater temperature affects the droplet formation process. Nanofluids are found to exhibit different characteristics in droplet formation and size control with the temperature. Addition of spherical-shaped TiO₂ (15 nm) nanoparticles in deionized water results in much smaller droplet size compared to the cylindrical-shaped TiO₂ (10×40) nm) nanoparticles. Other than nanofluid with cylindrical-shaped nanoparticles, the droplet size was found to increase with increasing temperature.