The Experiment Study On Manipulating Micro-Droplets

Droplet-based microfluidic technology has been widely applied in different fields, such as cell encapsulatio, polymerase chain reaction, drug delivery, nano-material synthesis and so on,the advantages of which lie in reducing sample volumes, high sensitivity, inexpensive cost, fast reaction rate. It has attractedmore and more researchers’attention. This paper presents some work focusing on microfluidic technology.The formation of highly monodispersed single droplets is the foundation for the deep-going study on microfluidic technology. Firstly,we simply describe the soft-lithography method to fabricate PDMS microfluidic chips. Then, we use these microchips to generate microdroplets. Besides, we also introduce some other methods to produce uniform droplets, such as assembled coaxial glass capillaries, mosaic glasses and assembled microtee, and compare their each excellences and flaws.Secondly, we briefly summarize the current research about droplet fission. Then, we use all kinds of PDMS chips to realize one droplet breaking up to two, three or five daughter droplets. From the experimental results, we discuss the relationship between the length and deflection angle of each branch and the daughter droplets’size. And regulating the flow rates controls the daughter droplets’size.Finally, we do some introduction of double emulsions. Connecting two MicroTees with glass capillary tubes directly, we develop a series microdevices allowing for double emulsions. The inner and outer droplets size and the number of the core droplet can be controlled independently just by adjusting flow rates.