Bubbles

Bubbles with Thin, Intermediate and Thick Shells

The beauty of microfluidics is having exquisite control over droplet parameters, such as size and number of inner drops and thickness of the shell. In the images below, we demonstrate control of shell thickness; this is accomplished by controlling the flow rates of the fluids through the microfluidic device. Here, the inner droplets are not liquid drops but nitrogen gas and the shells are rigid after solvent evaporation as shown in the You Tube video at the bottom of the page. This work was collaboratively done with Wynter Duncanson.

To make nanoparticle encapsulated bubbles, we follow the work of Myung Lee and collaborators, "Microfluidic Fabrication of Stable Nanoparticle Shelled Bubbles", Myung Lee, Varesh Prasad and Daeyeon Lee, Langmuir, 2010, 26 (4), 2227-2230.