Yu Jian, Kan Xueqing, Xiang Zhaoyang, Liu Jiachen, Bao Fubing, Hou Likai
Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Flow Measurement Technology, College of Metrology Measurement and Instrument, China Jiliang University, Hangzhou 310018, China.
Langmuir. 2024 Oct 22;40(42):22355-22362. doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.4c03047. Epub 2024 Oct 8.
This work reports a simple microfluidic method for splitting a mother droplet into two daughter droplets with high and precise volume ratios. To achieve this, a droplet-splitting microfluidic device embedded with a three-dimensional (3D) conical microstructure is fabricated, in which the high splitting ratios of monodisperse mother droplets are achieved. The volume ratio of the split daughter droplets can reach up to 265. In addition, we examined factors that affect the splitting ratio of the daughter droplets and found that the ratio is affected by the flow rates of the two individual outlet channels, the injection length of the conical microstructure, and the diameter of the original mother droplets. Numerical simulations of these parameters were conducted to gain a clearer understanding of the splitting behavior. The proposed droplet splitting device with a conical microstructure enables on-chip sample extraction and droplet volume control, which can be a powerful tool for various droplet-based applications in microfluidic devices such as viral infectivity assays and sequencing heterogeneous populations.
这项工作报道了一种简单的微流控方法，可将母液滴精确地分裂为两个具有高且精确体积比的子液滴。为此，制造了一种嵌入三维（3D）锥形微结构的液滴分裂微流控装置，在该装置中可实现单分散母液滴的高分裂比。分裂后的子液滴体积比可达265。此外，我们研究了影响子液滴分裂比的因素，发现该比例受两个独立出口通道的流速、锥形微结构的注入长度以及原始母液滴的直径影响。对这些参数进行了数值模拟，以更清楚地了解分裂行为。所提出的具有锥形微结构的液滴分裂装置能够实现芯片上的样品提取和液滴体积控制，这对于微流控装置中各种基于液滴的应用（如病毒感染性测定和异质群体测序）而言可能是一种强大的工具。
