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On-demand, parallel droplet merging method with non-contact droplet pairing in droplet-based microfluidics

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Abstract

We demonstrate a simple approach for merging droplets in an on-demand, parallel manner via non-contact pairing of two droplets. The non-contact pairing can be achieved by exploiting flow-induced deformability of a droplet with a unique structure of merging element. Non-contact paired droplets, which are initially stabilized by surfactant molecules, can be merged simply by destabilizing the droplet interface and bringing two droplets into contact. On-demand, parallel droplet merging is performed with a proper pressure profile achieved by a pneumatic pressure supply system, and merging process is solely dependent on the pressure-driven fluid flow. We achieved an average merging efficiency of 90.0 % (SD = 3.14, n = 450) in performing parallel merging in a non-contact paired droplet array. We also evaluated the on-demand merging performance by measuring the average merging delay time (mean = 3.25 s, SD ± 1.09 s, n ~ 180). Furthermore, we demonstrated the applicability of our device for the initiation of a chemical reaction through the merging of two droplets with different chemical contents. We believe that the proposed method will be useful for studying various droplet-based reactions.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by BioNano Health-Guard Research Center funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning (MSIP) of Korea as Global Frontier Project (H-GUARD_2014M3A6B2060526) and Basic Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2012R1A1A2006305), and a grant of the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI), funded by the Ministry of Health & Welfare, Republic of Korea (Grant Number: HI15C0001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), San 31 Hyoja-dong, Nam-gu, Pohang, Kyungbuk, 790-784, Republic of Korea

    Sanghyun Lee, Hojin Kim, Dong-Joon Won & Joonwon Kim

  2. Stratio, Inc., 998 Hamilton Ave., Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA

    Jaehyung Lee

Authors
  1. Sanghyun Lee
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  2. Hojin Kim
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  3. Dong-Joon Won
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  4. Jaehyung Lee
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  5. Joonwon Kim
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joonwon Kim.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

10404_2015_1676_MOESM1_ESM.docx

Characterization of the effect of the front neck width and droplet diameter on required suction pressure to droplet trap or squeeze, design of a droplet generation device, experimental setup (DOCX 6789 kb)

Entire droplet merging process (WMV 1953 kb)

Entire droplet merging process (WMV 4525 kb)

Droplet merging behavior under two pairing modes (WMV 1369 kb)

Demonstration of chemical reaction initiation by proposed droplet merging method (WMV 434 kb)

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Lee, S., Kim, H., Won, DJ. et al. On-demand, parallel droplet merging method with non-contact droplet pairing in droplet-based microfluidics. Microfluid Nanofluid 20, 1 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-015-1676-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-015-1676-z

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