Table 6.

Average size of alginate microparticles prepared using droplet-based microfluidics with different gelation methods

Average size of microparticles	Gelation method	Reference
1–50 μm 10–300 nm	Internal gelation with water-soluble cross-linkers mixed with Na-alginate before droplet generation	Rondeau and Cooper-White 2008a [39]
50–300 μm	Internal gelation with water-soluble cross-linkers mixed with Na-alginate after droplet generation	Xu et al. 2008 [54]
20–50 μm		Liu et al. 2006 [28]
22–42 μm		Trivedi et al. 2009 [48]
60–100 μm	Internal gelation with water-insoluble cross-linkers mixed with Na-alginate after droplet generation	Zhang et al. 2007 [61]
26 μm		Akbari and Pirbodaghi 2014 [3]
50–100 μm		Yu et al. 2019 [56]
10–50 μm	Internal gelation with slightly water-soluble cross-linkers mixed with Na-alginate after droplet generation	Utech et al. 2015 [49]
50–70 μm	External gelation with on-chip introduction of cross-linkers	Zhang et al. 2007 [61]
147–176 μm		Liu et al. 2019 [29]
5–10 μm		Pittermannová et al. 2016a [34]
6–10 μm		Sugaya et al. 2011a [44]
100–200 μm	External gelation with off-chip introduction of cross-linkers	Hu et al. 2012 [20]
7–40 μm		Zhang et al. 2020a [59]

^aPartially miscible fluids were used