Unsaturated Fatty Acid Oil-Based Microdroplets: A Promising Novel Class of Microdroplets

Droplet-based microfluidics has rapidly advanced applications in chemistry, biology, materials science, medicine, food science, and cosmetics. Using this technology, various oils have been employed for fluid encapsulation. This study is the first to investigate the use of an animal-based unsaturated fatty acid oil—emu oil—for microdroplet formation. We characterized droplet generation in the presence and absence of a non-fluorinated surfactant at a defined concentration and examined the influence of geometrical parameters using T-junction microchannels with two different central channel widths. The results were compared with those obtained from a plant-based oil (olive oil) under parallel experimental conditions. Given the growing concerns regarding the environmental and health risks of fluorocarbon oils combined with fluorinated surfactants, which are widely used in microfluidics, emu oil represents a potentially safer alternative for microdroplet-based technologies across multiple fields.