In this paper, we utilise bulk acoustic waves to control the position of microparticles inside droplets in two-phase microfluidic systems and demonstrate a method to enrich the microparticles. In droplet microfluidics different unit operations are combined and integrated on-chip to miniaturise complex biochemical assays. We present a droplet unit operation capable of controlling the position of microparticles during a trident shaped droplet split. An acoustic standing wave field is generated in the microchannel, and the acoustic forces direct the encapsulated microparticles to the centre of the droplets. The method is generic and requires no labelling of the microparticles, and is operated in a non-contact fashion. It was possible to achieve 2+fold enrichment of polystyrene beads (5 µm in diameter) in the centre daughter droplet with an average recovery of 89% of the beads. Red blood cells were also successfully manipulated inside droplets. These results show the possibility to use acoustophoresis in two-phase systems to enrich microparticles, and opens up for new dropletbased assays that are not possible to perform today.
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