Deterministic droplet coding via acoustofluidics. Issue 23 (26th October 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhang, Peiran; Wang, Wei; Fu, Hai; Rich, Joseph; Su, Xingyu; Bachman, Hunter; Xia, Jianping; Zhang, Jinxin; Zhao, Shuaiguo; Zhou, Jia; Huang, Tony Jun
• Is Part Of: Lab on a chip. Volume 20:Issue 23(2020)
• Page Start: 4466
• Page End: 4473
• Publication Date: 2020-10-26
• Subjects: Miniature electronic equipment -- Periodicals; Combinatorial chemistry -- Periodicals; Biotechnology -- Periodicals; 543.0813
• DOI: 10.1039/d0lc00538j
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1473-0197

Abstract

Abstract : Encoding information into the serial sequence of micro-droplet lengths via acoustofluidic dispensing. Abstract : Droplet microfluidics has become an indispensable tool for biomedical research and lab-on-a-chip applications owing to its unprecedented throughput, precision, and cost-effectiveness. Although droplets can be generated and screened in a high-throughput manner, the inability to label the inordinate amounts of droplets hinders identifying the individual droplets after generation. Herein, we demonstrate an acoustofluidic platform that enables on-demand, real-time dispensing, and deterministic coding of droplets based on their volumes. By dynamically splitting the aqueous flow using an oil jet triggered by focused traveling surface acoustic waves, a sequence of droplets with deterministic volumes can be continuously dispensed at a throughput of 100 Hz. These sequences encode barcoding information through the combination of various droplet lengths. As a proof-of-concept, we encoded droplet sequences into end-to-end packages ( e.g., a series of 50 droplets), which consisted of an address barcode with binary volumetric combinations and a sample package with consistent volumes for hosting analytes. This acoustofluidics-based, deterministic droplet coding technique enables the tagging of droplets with high capacity and high error-tolerance, and can potentially benefit various applications involving single cell phenotyping and multiplexed screening.