Abstract
We present free-floating amphiphilic picoliter microcarriers for multiplexed loading in a microfluidic device. The amphiphilic microcarrier is composed of encoded hydrophobic hexagonal outer structure and hydrophilic inner structure. We fabricate these free-floating droplet carriers and assemble them in a microfluidic device for a demonstration of multiplexed liquid loading. Picoliter loading is performed by serial solution exchange of aqueous and oil phase solution. We are able to precisely adjust the loaded volume by varying the diameter and depth of the microcarrier. We also fabricate arbitrary shaped microwells and load picoliter droplets into them. A microbead suspension is also used to demonstrate mixing via continuous oil flow. Further development of this work may be applicable to high-throughput multiplexed assays using quantized liquid loading in a microfluidic environment.
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Acknowledgments
This work was partly supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MEST) (No. 2011-0028409, 2011-0016491, NRF-2011-35B-D00015), by Hi Seoul Science/Humanities Fellowship from Seoul Scholarship Foundation.
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W. Park and S. Han contributed equally to this work.
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Park, W., Han, S., Lee, H. et al. Free-floating amphiphilic picoliter droplet carriers for multiplexed liquid loading in a microfluidic channel. Microfluid Nanofluid 13, 511–518 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-012-0989-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-012-0989-4