Needleless electrospinning: Electrically driven instability and multiple jetting from the free surface of a spherical liquid layer

The following work deals with the electrically driven instability of a viscous leaky dielectric layer on a spherical surface subjected to an initially spherically symmetric electric field. It is shown that, at a certain critical voltage value, the layer becomes unstable since surface tension can no longer sustain the static equilibrium situation. As a result, radial protrusions are formed at the leaky dielectric surface, which can be beneficial in needleless electrospinning, where the formation of multiple jets originating from a single surface is desirable.