We report on a pulse laser-driven droplet generation (PLDG) mechanism that enables on-demand droplet generation at rates up to 10,000 droplets/sec in a single-layer PDMS-based microfluidic device. Injected droplet volumes can be continuously tuned between 1 pL to 150 pL with less than 1% volume variation.

We report a high speed and high purity pulsed laser triggered fluorescence activated cell sorter (PLACS) with a sorting throughput up to 20 000 mammalian cells s−1 with 37% sorting purity, 90% cell viability in enrichment mode, and >90% purity in high purity mode at 1500 cells s−1 or 3000 beads s−1. Fast switching (30 μs) and a small perturbation volume (~90 pL) is achieved by a unique sorting mechanism in which explosive vapor bubbles are generated using focused laser pulses in a single layer microfluidic PDMS channel.

Electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD) promises to be an important lab-on-a-chip approach for effectively manipulating droplets with electric field-controlled surface tension. Droplets manipulated in electrowetting-based devices are typically sandwiched between two parallel plates and actuated by digital electrodes. The size of pixilated electrodes limits the minimum droplet size that can be manipulated. Here, we report on a single-sided continuous optoelectrowetting (SCOEW) mechanism that enables light-patterned electrowetting modulation for continuous droplet manipulation on an open, featureless, and photoconductive surface. SCOEW overcomes the size limitation of physical pixilated electrodes by utilizing dynamic and reconfigurable optical patterns and enables the continuous transport, splitting, merging, and mixing of droplets with volumes ranging from 50 microL to 250 pL, over 5-orders of magnitude. This single-sided open configuration provides a flexible interface for integration with other microfluidic components, such as sample reservoirs through simple tubing. Light-triggered, parallel, and volume-tunable droplet injection with volume variation less than 1% has been demonstrated with SCOEW. The unique lateral field-driven optoelectrowetting mechanism also enables extremely low light intensity actuation, and droplet manipulation can be achieved by directly positioning the SCOEW chip on a LCD screen used in a laptop or portable cellular phone.

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For many practical electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD) applications, the use of high-capacitance dielectric materials is critically demanded to induce a large surface tension modulation. Thin-film dielectric layers such as Parylene C, silicon dioxide (SiO2), and aluminum oxide (Al2O3) have been commonly used for EWOD. However, these dielectric materials are fabricated by conventional integrated circuit (IC) processes which are typically time-consuming and require complex and expensive laboratory setups such as high-vacuum facilities. In this article, a novel ion gel material was demonstrated as a spin-coatable and high-capacitance dielectric for low-cost EWOD applications. The ion gel offers a 2 or 3 order higher capacitance (c ≈ 10 μF/cm(2)) than conventional dielectrics commonly used for EWOD while being fabricated through a simple low-cost spin-coating process. We discuss the fundamentals of an ion gel dielectric, its fabrication process of spin coating, and the interaction with a hydrophobic layer for practical EWOD applications. The ion gel films, which consist of a copolymer, poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) [P(VDF-HFP)], and an ionic liquid, 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide [EMIM][TFSI], were successfully deposited on ITO substrates by using a simple spin-coating process. The experimental demonstrations validated the theoretical modeling of the ion gel layer as a high-capacitance dielectric. The EWOD performance of the ion gel samples was compared to that of other conventional dielectric materials to show the performance improvement.

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