Abstract Spherical crystals are ubiquitous in nature and the necessary breaks in translational symmetry not seen in flat crystals render them structurally unique. Polymer crystals have been shown to exhibit nonflat morphologies, but control over their formation is difficult to achieve. One strategy is directing the crystallization by spatially and/or temporally tuning chain segmental mobility. This has been studied early on using polymer blends or polymer/solvent systems where coupling liquid–liquid phase separation with crystallization could provide morphological control. In this Trend article, a recent trend in using miniemulsion systems to act as nanoscale confinement on chain segmental mobility is reviewed. The confinement at this length scale causes unique features to arise in ordering processes such as liquid–liquid phase separation and crystallization that are not observed at the macroscale. The generality of this approach makes it a good candidate to direct the formation of new and unique hierarchical polymer nanostructures that could be utilized in numerous applications.
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THEORETICAL, COMPUTATIONAL AND EXPERIMENTAL CHARACTERIZATION OF SHEAR-DEPENDENT MICRO-VORTICES IN LIQUID—LIQUID FLOW-FOCUSING GEOMETRY
In this work, we apply theoretical, computational and experimental fluid dynamics to characterize hydrodynamics micro-vortices formation in the dispersed phase at the flow-focusing microfluidic droplet generation junction. This interfacial hydrodynamic method can be exploited to trap cells inside the micro-vortices and later release them in a one-to-one manner to achieve high efficiency single-cell encapsulation inside droplets. This passive trap and release mechanism is controlled by the distance between the closed vortex streamline and the liquid-liquid interface (dgap) and, thus, fundamental understanding of the micro-vortices and parameters affecting their formation, trajectory and magnitude is necessary to achieve effective one-to-one encapsulation.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1841509
- PAR ID:
- 10316889
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The 25th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS 2021)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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