SUMMARY
UCLA researchers in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have developed a contactless digital ferrofluidic approach for small-volume droplet generation, manipulation and transport.
BACKGROUND
Automated microfluidic technologies can perform autonomous, accurate, and consistent fluidic operations. Current automated systems have low reagent consumption, high reproducibility, and high throughput, but they must operate at low flow rates and are limited to predefined fluid pathways and geometrically constrained operations. Alternative platforms, such as electrowetting-on-dielectrics (EWODs), have been used to overcome these limitation but they require complex and expensive device fabrication, have limited durability, and can suffer from electrode contamination. New innovations are needed that can perform parallelized and sequential fluidic operations at small length scales while also being robust in application, output geometry and use.
INNOVATION
Researchers at UCLA have developed a contactless, droplet manipulation platform that can controllably and safely perform microfluidic operations such as: droplet dispensing, generation, filtering, and merging. The platform uses electronically controlled actuator of biocompatible magnetic fluids to manipulate a droplet (e.g. generation, dispensing and transfer) in a pipelined and highly-automated array. The platform has been successfully implemented and tested to analyze aqueous droplets rapidly (~10 centimeters/second), repeatedly (>10,000 cycles), and robustly (>24 hours). This digital microfluid manipulation platform provides a scalable, cost-effective, and reduced failure-mode approach to automated small-volume handing.
POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS
- Automation of small-volume generation, manipulation and transport
- Digital electronic applications
- Bioanalytical operations
- Medical diagnostics, -omics
- Point-of-care diagnostics
- Chemical/material synthesis
ADVANTAGES
- Contactless
- Biocompatible
- Fast droplet generation and manipulation
- Good reproducibility
- Robust system
RELATED MATERIALS
STATUS OF DEVELOPMENT
First successful demonstration using aqueous droplets filled with biocompatible magnetic nanoparticles rapidly (~10 centimeters/second), repeatedly (>10,000 cycles), and robustly (>24 hours).