Droplet chip

Droplet microfluidics is a technique where an immiscible phase in contact with a continuous phase (often oil with a surfactant) is manipulated in such ways that droplets of homogeneous diameters are created. One application of droplet microfluidic is called digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR), whereby each droplet contains the PCR product that will be later amplified.

The example below is used to generate droplets for molecular displacement amplification (MDA) for the Single Cell Genomics SciLifeLab facility. The chip on the left is a classic droplet generator, while the chip on the right allows us drastically increase the droplet throughput.

These designs were originally published by Kim et al in a study looking at variations in single cancer cells using rapid-emulsification digital droplet MDA.