https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201921514003
Design Of An Optofluidic Device For The Measurement Of The Elastic Modulus Of Deformable Particles
1
Department of Chemical, Materials, and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Naples Federico II
2
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University
* e-mail: massimiliano.villone@unina.it
Published online: 10 September 2019
Suspensions carrying deformable inclusions are ubiquitous in nature and applications. Hence, high-throughput characterization of the mechanical properties of soft particles is of great interest. Recently, a non-invasive optofluidic technique has been developed for the measurement of the interfacial tension between two immiscible liquids [8]. We have adapted such technique to the case of soft solid beads, thus designing a non-invasive optofluidic device for the measurement of the mechanical properties of deformable particles from real-time optical imaging of their deformation.
The device consists of a cylindrical microfluidic channel with a cross-section reduction in which we make initially spherical soft beads flow suspended in a Newtonian carrier. By imaging the deformation of a particle in real time while it goes through the constriction, it is possible to get a measure of its elastic modulus through a theoretically derived-correlation. We provide both experimental and numerical validation of our device.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2019
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
