On-demand liquid-in-liquid droplet metering and fusion utilizing pneumatically actuated membrane valves

This paper presents an active emulsification scheme that is capable of producing micro-droplets with desired volumes and compositions on demand. Devices with pneumatically actuated membranes constructed on top of specially designed microfluidic channels are utilized to meter and fuse liquid-in-liquid droplets. By steadily pressurizing a fluid and intermittently blocking its flow, droplets with desired volumes are dispersed into another fluid. Furthermore, droplets from multiple sources are fused together to produce combined droplets with desired compositions. In the prototype demonstration, a three-layer PDMS molding and irreversible bonding process was employed to fabricate the proposed microfluidic devices. For a dispersed-phase flow that is normally blocked by a membrane valve, the relationship between the volume (V) of a metered droplet and the corresponding valve open time (T) is found to be approximately V = kTa, in which k and a are constants determined mainly by the fluid-driving pressures. In addition to the metering device, functional droplet entrapment, fusion and flow-switching devices were also integrated in the system to produce desired combined droplets and deliver them to intended destinations upon request. As such, the demonstrated microfluidic system could potentially realize the controllability on droplet volume, composition and motion, which is desired for a variety of chemical and biological applications.

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