Interface fragmentation via horizontal vibration: A pathway to scalable monodisperse emulsification

We present a scalable method for producing monodisperse microscale emulsions in a rectangular container holding two stably stratified layers of immiscible liquids by applying horizontal vibration. This setup enables the excitation of a single line of ordered Faraday waves along each end wall when viscous forces dominate interfacial dynamics. Our experiments and theoretical modeling show that the critical nondimensional acceleration for the breakup of the wave tips in a regular array of droplets scales as N − 1 / 2 ω * 3 / 2 , where N is the kinematic viscosity ratio and ω * is the frequency of forcing on the viscous-capillary scale. The droplet diameter can be easily tuned by varying the forcing parameters, and the number of droplets generated per cycle is proportional to the width of the container.