Note: Electrohydrodynamic atomization of liquid sheet

Novel electrohydrodynamic atomization via liquid sheet is presented herein to produce monodisperse. Instead of multiple capillaries/holes used in previous publication, the spray heads with a circular slit exit, shaping the spray liquid into a thin sheet, were utilized. A number of notches were machined along the outer edge of an annular slit to bifurcate the liquid sheet into multiple jets and anchor them to establish the stable multijet operation. The liquid-sheet electrospray heads with 6, 12, and 20 notches were investigated in this study. It is observed that, for spraying liquids of low electrical conductivity, the maximal liquid flowrate of a 20-notched head is 166 times higher than that of single capillary with an inner diameter the same as the slit spacing of studied heads. The above observation evidences that the liquid-sheet electrospray technique and heads have excellent potential for high mass throughput while keeping the spray head cost low. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3553400]