Gas-assisted Taylor Cone-Jets

We introduce a way to produce steady micro/nano-liquid jets via electric fields together with co-flowing gas streams. We study the dripping-jetting transition of this configuration theoretically through a global stability analysis as a function of the governing parameters involved. Indeed, we derive two coupled scaling laws that predict both the minimum jet diameter and its maximum velocity. The theoretical prediction provides a single curve that describes not only the numerical computations but also experimental data from the literature for cone-jets. Additionally, we performed a set of experiments to verify what parameters influence the jet length. Due to the diameters below 1 micrometer and high speeds attainable in excess of 100 m/s, this concept has the potential to be utilized for structural biology analyses with X-ray free-electron lasers at megahertz repetition rates as well as other applications.