Feng Chunying, Takahashi Kohei, Zhu Jianan
Frontier Science Center for Synthetic Biology and Key Laboratory of Systems Bioengineering (Ministry of Education), School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2022 Apr 19;10:891213. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2022.891213. eCollection 2022.
Double emulsion (DE) droplets with controlled size and internal structure are a promising platform for biological analysis, chemical synthesis, and drug delivery systems. However, to further "democratize" their application, new methods that enable simple and precise spatial patterning of the surface wettability of droplet-generating microfluidic devices are still needed. Here, by leveraging the increase in hydrophilicity of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) due to the plasma-treatment used to permanently bond to glass, we developed a one-step method to selectively pattern the wettability of PDMS microfluidic devices for DE generation. Our results show that both Aquapel-treated and 1H,1H,2H,2H-Perfluorodecyltriethoxysilan (PFDTES)-treated devices are functionally showing the generality of our method. With the resulting microfluidic devices, both water-in-oil-in-water (w/o/w) and oil-in-water-in-oil (o/w/o) DE droplets can be produced. Using a PDMS mixture containing cross-linking agents, we formed PDMS microcapsules by solidifying the shell layer of water-in-PDMS-in-water DE droplets. We also characterize the morphological properties of the generated droplets/microcapsules. We anticipate the method developed in this work could be used in a broad range of applications of DE droplets.
具有可控尺寸和内部结构的双乳液（DE）液滴是生物分析、化学合成和药物递送系统的一个有前景的平台。然而，为了进一步“普及”它们的应用，仍然需要能够对产生液滴的微流控装置的表面润湿性进行简单而精确的空间图案化的新方法。在这里，通过利用用于与玻璃永久键合的等离子体处理导致的聚二甲基硅氧烷（PDMS）亲水性增加，我们开发了一种一步法来选择性地对用于产生DE的PDMS微流控装置的润湿性进行图案化。我们的结果表明，经Aquapel处理和经1H,1H,2H,2H-全氟癸基三乙氧基硅烷（PFDTES）处理的装置在功能上都显示了我们方法的通用性。使用所得的微流控装置，可以产生水包油包水（w/o/w）和油包水包油（o/w/o）的DE液滴。通过使用含有交联剂的PDMS混合物，我们通过固化水包PDMS包水DE液滴的壳层形成了PDMS微胶囊。我们还表征了所产生的液滴/微胶囊的形态特性。我们预计这项工作中开发的方法可用于DE液滴的广泛应用。
