We designed, experimentally created and evaluated gas-focused micro-jets under the influence of an electric field in this Master thesis. An analysis of the flow regimes of the jet, the shape of the Taylor cone and the average speed of the jet was carried out, depending on the variation of the volume flow of the used liquids, the ambient pressure and the strength of the electric field. The jet liquid was a 50 % volume mixture of water and ethanol, and nitrogen was used for the focusing gas. Software was developed in Python to analyze the results based on computer vision. With it, it was possible to process the captured experimental recordings automatically. Reynolds numbers for gas and liquid were 0 - 190 and 0.09 - 5.4, respectively. The negative electrode was located 400 - 500 µm downstream of the nozzle. The positive electrode was immersed in the sample and exposed to a DC voltage of 0 - 7 kV. The resulting micro-jets had a diameter of 1 - 25 µm, a length of 50 - 500 µm and an average speed of 0.5 - 10 m/s. It was found that micro-jets, under the influence of an electric field, accelerate along their entire length. This differs from acceleration with the focusing gas, which is limited only to a region in the nozzle. This additional acceleration, experimentally evaluated for the first time, opens the possibility of developing a new generation of very fast micro-jets for sample delivery in serial femtosecond crystallography.
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