Issue 11, 2014

Fluoropolymer surface coatings to control droplets in microfluidic devices

Abstract

We have demonstrated the application of low surface energy fluoropolymer coatings onto poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) microfluidic devices for droplet formation and extraction-induced merger of droplets. Initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD) was used to pattern fluoropolymer coatings within microchannels based on geometrical constraints. In a two-phase flow system, the range of accessible flow rates for droplet formation was greatly enhanced in the coated devices. The ability to controllably apply the coating only at the inlet facilitated a method for merging droplets. An organic spacer droplet was extracted from between a pair of aqueous droplets. The size of the organic droplet and the flow rate controlled the time to merge the aqueous droplets; the process of merging was independent of the droplet sizes. Extraction-induced droplet merging is a robust method for manipulating droplets that could be applied in translating multi-step reactions to microfluidic platforms.

Graphical abstract: Fluoropolymer surface coatings to control droplets in microfluidic devices

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
21 Jan 2014
Accepted
27 Mar 2014
First published
28 Mar 2014
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Lab Chip, 2014,14, 1834-1841

Author version available

Fluoropolymer surface coatings to control droplets in microfluidic devices

C. T. Riche, C. Zhang, M. Gupta and N. Malmstadt, Lab Chip, 2014, 14, 1834 DOI: 10.1039/C4LC00087K

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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