Microfluidic droplet formation and manipulations for microdroplets used as miniaturized laboratories

Abstract

As an emerging technique, Droplet Microfluidics has attracted great research and development interest for its capability to form micron sized droplets for applications in chemistry and biology. Microfluidic droplets are the basic cells in droplet microfluidic system and can be seen as isolated reactors compartmentalizing reactions and molecular processes. In order for the droplet microfluidic system to be configured according to functionality requirements, it is very essential to implement independent control of individual droplet. In this PhD thesis project, a series of droplet control techniques are developed and the manipulation mechanisms are investigated. With the developed techniques, compound droplets could be formed; targeted droplet could be trapped in microwell and droplet fusion could be on-demand triggered; trapped droplets could be on-demand released to microchannel for further analysis. The effective droplet manipulation schemes developed were expected to greatly facilitate the wide usage of droplets as naturally well-defined miniaturized laboratories.