Speaker: Prof Prosenjit Sen, Professor, CeNSE, IISc.

Title: "Droplets and Vapours in Microscale Devices"

Date: Monday, 21st August 2026 - Time: 4 PM

Hi Tea & Coffee: 5 PM

Venue: CeNSE Seminar hall

Abstract:

Droplets are ubiquitous in modern engineering, serving as critical components in a 
vast array of applications ranging from electronics manufacturing and material printing 
to biochemical reactors and organ-mimicking platforms. As their size decreases, surface 
tension increasingly governs their behaviour, giving rise to phenomena that are both 
scientifically intriguing and technologically important. While this surface-tension 
dominance can be advantageous in some applications such as compartmentalized micro-biochemical 
reactors. In other applications it also introduces profound challenges in the precise creation, 
handling, and management of fluids in highly constrained environments, such as high-resolution 
droplet printing and atomic vapor cells.

This talk will explore how interfacial phenomena can be understood and engineered across a range 
of applications. I will begin with composite droplets, focusing on how their interface structure 
and material properties determine their equilibrium shapes and dynamic response. I will then discuss 
how the rapid collapse of a liquid cavity and the singular flow generated during this process can be 
exploited to produce a single droplet on demand. Next, I will address the challenges of containing 
and hermetically sealing liquids and vapours, particularly in miniaturized atomic-vapour cells for 
quantum sensing and related devices. Finally, I will show how multiscale-structured surfaces can 
control liquid spreading, evaporation, and boiling to improve device cooling. These examples 
demonstrate how the same fundamental physics of droplets and interfaces can enable solutions 
across manufacturing, quantum technology, and thermal management.

Biography:

Prosenjit Sen is a faculty member at CeNSE, IISc Bengaluru, working in interfacial microfluidics 
for Lab-on-Chip & other applications. His research focuses on Microfluidics, Lab-on-chip, Droplets, 
Interfacial phenomenon in microfluidics, Fluidic sensors, Heterogeneous integration.

Host Faculty:  Prof. Vini Gautam