Droplet Generation, Sensing and Heating in Microfluidic Devices

Droplet-based microfluidics has drawn ever-increasing attention over the past decade because of its potential to be employed as an enabling technology for High Throughput Screening. A typical droplet-based microfluidic device employs two immiscible fluids to generate gas bubbles or
liquid droplets at the nanoliter scale. This talk is limited to the study of liquid droplets in microfluidic devices. In particular, I will focus on introducing the models that we developed for droplet generation in T-junction microchannels and the effect of surfactant dynamics on droplet
generation. Following this, droplet trafficking in microfluidic junctions under asymmetric geometric and flow conditions will be briefly discussed. Finally, I will talk about the capacitance sensor and microwave sensor/heating that we developed for measuring droplet size, speed and
content and manufacturing polymer beads. The uniqueness of our microwave sensor is that it is also capable of simultaneously heating up individual droplets without affecting the surrounding oil streams and chip materials.