Steady cone-jet mode in compound-fluidic electro-flow focusing for fabricating multicompartment microcapsules

A compound-fluidic electro-flow focusing (CEFF) process is proposed to produce multicompartment microcapsules. The central device mainly consists of a needle assembly of two parallel inner needles and one outer needle mounted in a gas chamber with their tips facing a small orifice at the bottom of the chamber. As the outer and the inner fluids flow through the needle assembly, a high-speed gas stream elongates the liquid menisci in the vicinity of the orifice entrance. An electric field is further integrated into capillary flow focusing to promote the formation of steady cone-jet mode in a wide range of operation parameters. The multiphase liquid jet is broken up into droplets due to perturbation propagation along the jet surface. To estimate the diameter of the multiphase liquid jet as a function of process parameters, a modified scaling law is derived and experimentally validated. Microcapsules of around 100 μm with an alginate shell and multiple cores at a production rate of 103–105 per second are produced. Technical feasibility of stimulation triggered coalescence and drug release is demonstrated by benchtop experiments. The proposed CEFF process can be potentially used to encapsulate therapeutic agents and biological cargos for controlled micro-reaction and drug delivery.