Microfluidics

Microfluidics, also known as "lab-on-chip", is the miniaturization of devices to integrate chemical and biological processes on a hand-held device. Two paradigms of "lab-on-chip" technologies, namely, droplet and digital microfluidics, have enabled progress in areas of miniaturizing biology and chemistry and high-throughput screening.

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Droplet microfluidics is a channel-based, two-phase flow fluidic system. Typically, aqueous monodisperse droplets of pL-nL volumes are formed with a surrounding oil phase and has emerged as a promising technology for high-throughput analysis (enabling creation and analysis of > 1000s of droplets).

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Digital microfluidics (DMF) is a fluidic system where droplets are created and manipulated on an array of electrodes (with no channels or valves) and is well-suited for adding reagents in parallel and mixing reagents on-demand without optimizing flow-rates or channel dimensions. These so called technologies have been applied to numerous applications: cell culture and analysis, enzymatic assays, and clinical diagnostics with the advantages of decreased sample volume, parallelization, and ease of downstream integration. See our Publications section for more detail.