Jeong Heon-Ho, Yelleswarapu Venkata R, Yadavali Sagar, Issadore David, Lee Daeyeon
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
Lab Chip. 2015 Dec 7;15(23):4387-92. doi: 10.1039/c5lc01025j.
Droplet-based microfluidics has led to transformational new approaches in diverse areas including materials synthesis and high-throughput biological assays. However, the translation of droplet microfluidics technology into commercial applications requires scale-up of droplet generation from the laboratory (<10 mL h(-1)) to the industrial (>1 L h(-1)) scale. To address this challenge, we develop a three-dimensional monolithic elastomer device (3D MED) for mass production of monodisperse emulsion droplets. Using double-sided imprinting, 3D microchannels are formed in a single elastomer piece that has 1000 parallel flow focusing generators (k-FFGs). Compared to previous work that parallelizes droplet generation, the 3D MED eliminates the needs for alignment and bonding of multiple pieces and thus makes it possible to achieve the high flow rates and pressure necessary for the kilo-scale generation of droplets. Using this approach, we demonstrate mass production of water-in-oil (W/O) emulsion droplets at production rates as high as 1.5 L h(-1) (>30 billion 45 μm diameter droplets per hour), with a coefficient of variation of droplet diameter of only 6.6%. Because of the simplicity, robustness, and manufacturability of our 3D MED architecture, it is well suited to bridge the gap between the continuously growing library of promising microfluidic technologies to generate microparticles that have been demonstrated in laboratory settings and their successful application in industry.
基于液滴的微流控技术在包括材料合成和高通量生物分析等不同领域带来了变革性的新方法。然而，将液滴微流控技术转化为商业应用需要将液滴生成规模从实验室规模（<10 mL h⁻¹）扩大到工业规模（>1 L h⁻¹）。为应对这一挑战，我们开发了一种用于大规模生产单分散乳液滴的三维整体式弹性体装置（3D MED）。通过双面压印，在具有1000个平行流动聚焦发生器（k-FFGs）的单个弹性体部件中形成3D微通道。与之前使液滴生成并行化的工作相比，3D MED消除了对多个部件进行对准和键合的需求，从而使得实现千规模液滴生成所需的高流速和压力成为可能。使用这种方法，我们展示了以高达1.5 L h⁻¹的生产率大规模生产油包水（W/O）乳液滴（每小时>300亿个直径45μm的液滴），液滴直径的变异系数仅为6.6%。由于我们的3D MED架构的简单性、稳健性和可制造性，它非常适合弥合在实验室环境中已得到证明的不断增长的有前景的微流控技术库，以生成微粒，与它们在工业中的成功应用之间的差距。
