Energy minimizing surface tension configurations for microparticles
An important area of microfluidics is the creation and manipulation of small droplets. This iscommonly done using microchannels or electrowetting. In the past few years, novel engineering methodshave been developed to create templated droplets using amphiphilic microparticles. These particles areobserved to hold nearly equal volumes of aqueous liquid when dispersed in an oil-water mixture. Thisbrings back to life a classical problem in mathematics - that of the configuration of a free surface thatminimizes surface energy. I will review some classical theory and explain what are the relevant problemsfor modern microfluidics applications. I will also discuss systems of microparticles that interact throughrandom interactions, eventually acheiving a uniform distribution of fluid throughout the interactingparticles. I will also discuss efficient numerical methods for computing low energy states for variousmicroparticle shapes, with comparison to physical experiments.