Electro-generation of single femtoliter- and picoliter-volume aqueous droplets in microfluidic systems

He, Mingyan; Kuo, Jason S.; Chiu, Daniel T.

doi:10.1063/1.1997280

Cited by 84 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 18 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…13 At the present time, microfluidic techniques have not been widely extended for synthesis of droplets that are a few micrometers in size or smaller. Nonmicrofluidic methods are available for synthesis at this length scale, for example electrohydrodynamic jetting has been used to produce submicrometer scale fibers and particles; 14 however, this method is limited in the choice of materials and in the range of operating conditions possible. This method has been implemented recently in a microfluidic device to produce particles ranging from 1 to 10 micrometers in size; 15 however, the resulting particles were highly polydisperse compared with other microfluidic drop formation methods described above.…”

Section: Introduction and Background On Tipstreamingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microscale tipstreaming in a microfluidic flow focusing device

2006

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A microfluidic flow-focusing device is used to explore the use of surfactant-mediated tipstreaming to synthesize micrometer-scale and smaller droplets. By controlling the surfactant bulk concentration of a soluble nonionic surfactant in the neighborhood of the critical micelle concentration, along with the capillary number and the ratio of the internal and external flow rates, we observe several distinct modes of droplet breakup. For the most part, droplet breakup in microfluidic devices results in highly monodisperse droplets in the range of tens of micrometers in size. However, we observe a new mode of breakup called "thread formation" that resembles tipstreaming and yields tiny droplets in the range of a few micrometers in size or smaller. In this work, we characterize the growth of the thread and its maximum length as a function of flow variables and surfactant content, and we also characterize the period of droplet breakup as a function of these variables. Our results suggest possible methods for controlling the process. Using a simple flow visualization experiment as the basis, we report on preliminary efforts to model the thread formation process.

show abstract

Section: Introduction and Background On Tipstreamingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microscale tipstreaming in a microfluidic flow focusing device

2006

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This data for the probability of plasma formation p vs. pulse energy E p , shown in Fig. 3 was fit to a Gaussian error function which adequately models the stochastic nature of laser-induced plasma formation 23 (1) where , E th is the 'threshold' energy for plasma formation, i.e., the pulse energy that creates a plasma 50% of the time, and S governs the 'sharpness' of the Gaussian error function. The parameters determined by the fit shown in Fig.…”

Section: Energy Threshold For Pulsed Laser Microbeam-induced Plasma Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examination of laser microbeam cell lysis in a PDMS microfluidic channel using time-resolved imaging

et al. 2008

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We use time-resolved imaging to examine the lysis dynamics of non-adherent BAF-3 cells within a microfluidic channel produced by the delivery of single highly-focused 540 ps duration laser pulses at λ = 532 nm. Time-resolved bright-field images reveal that the delivery of the pulsed laser microbeam results in the formation of a laser-induced plasma followed by shock wave emission and cavitation bubble formation. The confinement offered by the microfluidic channel constrains substantially the cavitation bubble expansion and results in significant deformation of the PDMS channel walls. To examine the cell lysis and dispersal of the cellular contents, we acquire timeresolved fluorescence images of the process in which the cells were loaded with a fluorescent dye. These fluorescence images reveal cell lysis to occur on the nanosecond to microsecond time scale by the plasma formation and cavitation bubble dynamics. Moreover, the time-resolved fluorescence images show that while the cellular contents are dispersed by the expansion of the laser-induced cavitation bubble, the flow associated with the bubble collapse subsequently re-localizes the cellular contents to a small region. This capacity of pulsed laser microbeam irradiation to achieve rapid cell lysis in microfluidic channels with minimal dilution of the cellular contents has important implications for their use in lab-on-a-chip applications.

show abstract

“…[9][10][11][12][13] Drop size and distance may vary spatially and temporally. Hence, real time detection of droplets is critical for accurate control.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Real-time detection, control, and sorting of microfluidic droplets

Niu

Zhang²,

Peng³

et al. 2007

Biomicrofluidics

137

117

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We report the design and implementation of capacitive detection and control of microfluidic droplets in microfluidic devices. Integrated microfluidic chip͑s͒ with detection/control circuit enables us to monitor in situ the individual volume of droplets, ranging from nanoliter to picoliter, velocity and even composition, with an operation frequency of several kilohertz. Through electronic feedback, we are able to easily count, sort, and direct the microfluidic droplets. Potential applications of this approach can be employed in the areas of biomicrofluidic processing, microchemical reactions as well as digital microfluidics.

show abstract

Electro-generation of single femtoliter- and picoliter-volume aqueous droplets in microfluidic systems

Cited by 84 publications

References 18 publications

Microscale tipstreaming in a microfluidic flow focusing device

Microscale tipstreaming in a microfluidic flow focusing device

Examination of laser microbeam cell lysis in a PDMS microfluidic channel using time-resolved imaging

Real-time detection, control, and sorting of microfluidic droplets

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About