Pulsed Liquid Microjet

Diagram of the pulse liquid microjet driven by vapor bubble created with microsecond electric discharge inside a micro nozzle.

Occlusions of the retinal veins and arteries, associated with diseases such as hypertension and arteriosclerosis, are a major cause of severe and irreversible loss of vision. Treatments for retinal vascular diseases have been unsatisfactory owing in part to the difficulty of delivering drugs to the site of disease within the eye. We developed a new device, the vapor bubble-driven pulsed liquid microjet that can deliver precise amount of drugs into the lumen of small vessels such as those found in the retina. A liquid jet with diameter of several micrometers traveling at more than 60 m/s can penetrate through the wall of a 60-μm blood vessel with no damage to its opposite wall. The width of the perforation does not extend beyond the jet diameter thus providing for self-sealing nature of the lesion. The jet can be scaled down to sizes suitable for cellular applications.

Ejection of saline from 50 micrometer nozzle 15 microseconds after a discharge of 0.13 mJ.

A 60 micrometer-thick artery with a 20 micrometer perforation (indicated by red arrows) produced by liquid microjet. No damage to epithelium on the opposite wall can be observed.

• Principal Investigator:
  Daniel Palanker, Ph.D.
• Collaborators:
  Philip Huie, MSc.
  Roopa Dalal, MSc.
  Mark Blumenkranz, MD.