Stable electric-field driven cone-jetting of concentrated biosuspensions

Abstract

Electrospraying, or electrohydrodynamic jetting, is one of several jet-based technologies being explored to process living biological organisms. One of the key advantages of electrospraying is its ability to deposit advanced materials with high resolution that cannot be obtained with other competing technologies, such as ink-jet printing. However, to generate a controlled droplet size distribution in the micrometre range necessary for precision drop and placement of materials requires jetting in stable cone-jet mode. In this paper, we describe the experimental set-up and conditions by which electrospray jetting in stable cone-jet is achieved and use this methodology to process a highly concentrated biological suspension having 10⁷ cells ml⁻¹, the highest cellular loading processed to this day by a jetting approach in this jet based category. The areas of study to which this technology may be applied span the physical and the life sciences.