DG3-50um-Z100 Droplet Microfluidic Chips

In microfludics, generally speaking, there are 3 types of flow; laminar, droplet, and digital. Laminar flow, is well-known in micro-sized channels due to Reynold's number calculation. Digital and droplet flow conditions are similar to each other but in digital manipulation of liquid in microfludics, embedded electrodes and hydrophobic surfaces are used to move, mix or seperate droplets of liquid samples individually. Droplet flow, by the way, is a very beneficial finding in microfluidics tech.

Two immiscible liquid flowing opposite in a cross-section of microchannels do not mix with each other, obviously, and one forms micro-sized vesicles inside the other. The droplet formation depends on the cross-sectin geometry, channel sizes, relative flow rates, interfacial tension, and for some time the whole setup of tubings and pumping. The continuous phase in droplet microfluidics, is the liquid in which droplets are formed and the dispersed phase is the liquid of droplets. Using oil-water droplets is very common and mostli w-in-o droplets are used in Life Science applications. w-in-o-in-w double droplet applications or hydrogel-in-oil applications also become popular.

This is a passive droplet generation chip but there are also active (by electrical, magnetic, or centrifugel) droplet formation chip techniques. Although this chip is for passive droplet formation the actuation of liquid flow requires a pumping system.

Droplet microfluidics is accepted by various scientific and industrial applications mainly due to its highly monodisperse, well-controlled production and being high-throughput. These are some application fields:

--- Life Sciences: Single-cell pharmaceutical effect analysis, single cell gene expression level analysis, single cell mRNA/DNA sequencing analysis, digital droplet PCR, protein crystallization and screening,
--- Parmaceutical Sciences: Pharmaceutical synthesis and screening, pharmaceutical encapsulation inside microparticles / micro-bubble / micro-capsule formations, magnetic bead formation
--- Biotechnology: Therapeutical particle synthesis, single cell DNA modification analysis and screening, metagenomic screening, molecular library formation and screening, Bio-printing of cell spheres,
--- Diagnostic tech: Diagnostic devices for personalized medicine, novel biosensor research
--- Others: Chemical synthesis and screening, cosmetics, food industry, aerospace and more...