Journal Article

Printed droplet microfluidics for on demand dispensing of picoliter droplets and cells

Cole, Russell H., Shahi, Payam, Gartner, Zev J., Zhang, Jesse Q., Abate, Adam R., Tang, Shi-Yang, Poust, Sean, Siltanen, Christian A.

2017

Overview

Although the elementary unit of biology is the cell, high-throughput methods for the microscale manipulation of cells and reagents are limited. The existing options either are slow, lack single-cell specificity, or use fluid volumes out of scale with those of cells. Here we present printed droplet microfluidics, a technology to dispense picoliter droplets and cells with deterministic control. The core technology is a fluorescence-activated droplet sorter coupled to a specialized substrate that together act as a picoliter droplet and single-cell printer, enabling high-throughput generation of intricate arrays of droplets, cells, and microparticles. Printed droplet microfluidics provides a programmable and robust technology to construct arrays of defined cell and reagent combinations and to integrate multiple measurement modalities together in a single assay.

• Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
• Subject: Arrays / Biological Assay - methods / Biology / Cell Count - methods / Cell Line, Tumor / Dispensing / Droplets / Engineering / Fluorescence / Humans / Microfluidic Analytical Techniques - methods / Microfluidics / Microfluidics - methods / Microparticles / Physical Sciences / Printing - methods / Reagents / Robust control