Enhancing Throughput of Combinatorial Droplet Devices via Droplet Bifurcation, Parallelized Droplet Fusion, and Parallelized Detection

Micromachines

Kuangwen Hsieh²  Helena C. Zec¹  Polly C. Ma¹  Tushar D. Rane¹  Tza-Huei Wang²  Andrew deMello³ 

[1] Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA;Department of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA;;Department of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA

关键词: parallelization;    bifurcation;    droplets;    throughput;    microfluidics;   

DOI  :  10.3390/mi6101434

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Combinatorial droplet microfluidic devices with programmable microfluidic valves have recently emerged as a viable approach for performing multiplexed experiments in microfluidic droplets. However, the serial operation in these devices restricts their throughput. To address this limitation, we present a parallelized combinatorial droplet device that enhances device throughput via droplet bifurcation, parallelized droplet fusion, and parallelized droplet detection. In this device, sample droplets split evenly at bifurcating Y-junctions before multiple independent reagent droplets are injected directly into the split sample droplets for robust droplet fusion. Finally, the fused sample and reagent droplets can be imaged in parallel via microscopy. The combination of these approaches enabled us to improve the throughput over traditional, serially-operated combinatorial droplet devices by 16-fold—with ready potential for further enhancement. Given its current performance and prospect for future improvements, we believe the parallelized combinatorial droplet device has the potential to meet the demand as a flexible and cost-effective tool that can perform high throughput screening applications.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.