Precision deployment of liquid drops is the hallmark of the inkjet printing industry. There are a variety of different driver technologies, with the two most common being either piezo or bubblejet. In this work we present a novel passive driving method that exploits only the fluid properties and conduit geometry. An enormous range of droplet volumes produced is demonstrated. The method is already being used as a tool to enhance the capability of other experiments to study drop dynamics including droplet impacts, adhesions, and rebounds and the method may also be exploited for specific purposes in the design and testing of capillary fluidics applications such as ink jet printing. It may also be directly applicable to sensor systems such as in the precise delivery of microscopic amounts of fluids in Lab-On-Chip applications and for liquid management aboard spacecraft.
Andrew Wollman, Trevor Snyder, Don Pettit, Mark Weislogel, "Spontaneous Capillarity-Driven Droplet Deployment" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP29), 2013, pp 194 - 197, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2013.29.1.art00050_1