DEVICE FOR FORMING STREAM OF LIQUID MICRODROPLETS WITH POSSIBILITY OF CHANGING MICRODROPLET DENSITY Russian patent published in 2024 - IPC B67C3/30 

FIELD: various technological processes.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to drop microfluidics, hydrodynamics and heat exchange in two-phase and disperse systems, as well as cooling of electronic equipment. In particular, the invention describes a novel device for forming a flow of liquid microdroplets of various sizes and given density, including highly rarefied drops to single drops. When dispensing and moving micro amounts of liquid, levitation effect of microdroplets of liquid is used, caused by thermal action on reservoir with liquid – donor, as well as the effect of superintensive evaporation in the region of the gas-liquid-substrate contact line, which creates an intense vapour flow in this microregion with the ultrathin liquid film. Proposed device enables to carry out investigations with liquid drops in a much wider range than was possible in the prototype, where the drops were simply supplied to the heated surface. In the disclosed device, substrates can have different temperature, roughness, morphology, structure, shape, wettability, can be made from different materials and can be oriented at a certain angle to the flow of liquid microdroplets. Objective of the proposed invention is to increase the efficiency of the device owing to creating a flow of liquid microdroplets with a variable diameter of the microdrops and a variable density of microdroplets in the flow. Set task is solved by the fact that in the device for forming a stream of liquid microdroplets of a given density due to the formation of a dry spot in a horizontal heated thin layer of liquid, around which a meniscus is formed, and a gas-liquid-solid body contact line, comprising a substrate, a heating element, according to the invention, the heating element consists of eight independent sections of the same size, which are limited by a sharp edge with an angle, counted from the vertical, from 0 to 60 degrees to stabilize the meniscus of the liquid, dry spot is a cooled channel of square shape for formation of vertical flow of liquid microdroplets due to gravity and natural convection.

EFFECT: simplifying the process of dosing micro amounts of liquid and making it controlled.

1 cl, 3 dwg