Electric-Field-Driven Jetting Phenomenon Applied to Process Living Cells
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Electric-Field-Driven Jetting Phenomenon Applied to Process Living Cells Although recent advances have made inkjet printing of biological samples possible, concentrated suspensions pose a problem: the lower limit of the droplet diameter is about twice the internal diameter of the needle orifice, resulting in blockage in needles with diameters of 30 μm or less for the production of ~60 μm droplets. In practice, inkjet printing has a resolution of ≥100 μm due to droplet spreading. Electrohydrodynamic jetting (EHDJ), also known as electrospraying or electrostatic atomization, however, has been shown to produce droplets in the nanometer-tomicrometer size range from concentrated suspensions. In EHDJ, a charged medium exiting a needle enters a high-intensity electric field, thereby producing jets, which then initiate droplet formation through nonlinear processes. In inkjet printing, by contrast, a current is used to flex a piezoelectric crystal within a needle, thereby promoting droplet formation or, alternatively, ultrasound is used to create waves that generate droplets. Recently, researchers from the Mechanical Engineering Department at University College London and the Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics at Kings College
Figure 1. Schematic of the electrohydrodynamic jetting equipment.
London have demonstrated that EHDJ can be used to deposit living cells in suspension onto surfaces in droplets
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