“Recent Advances in Droplet Based Microfluidics for Chemical Analysis”

Michael Kaul
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
3210 North Cramer Street, Milwaukee, WI 53211
Advisor: Dr. Mark Dietz

ABSTRACT

Microfluidics, by enabling the downscaling of laboratory operations and permitting experiments to be performed on miniaturized devices, provides numerous benefits in chemical analysis, including a reduction in solvent and sample consumption, the ability to manipulate dangerous materials safety, and enhanced control via automation¹. Although microfluidics has its roots in the 1950’s, recent advances in a newly emerging branch of microfluidics, digital microfluidics (DMF), have the potential to revolutionize the field entirely.² Digital microfluidics deals with the manipulation of ultra-small droplets of liquids on a microelectronic chip to perform a wide array of both chemical and biological techniques and assays. To be able to qualitatively and quantitively analyze tiny droplets, detection techniques that are capable of being integrated into small devices are required, and recently, significant progress toward this integration has been achieved.³ For example, voltammetric³, image-based4, mass spectrometric5, and electrochemiluminescence-based6 analyses can now be performed on DMF devices. These advances illustrate the tremendous potential that droplet-based microfluidics offers, and lays the foundation for performing fully automated laboratory experiments on micro-devices with high throughput, sensitivity, selectivity, and portability.

¹Whitesides, G. M. Nature 2006, 442, 368–373.

²Nguyen, N.-T.; Hejazian, M.; Ooi, C.; Kashaninejad, N. Micromachines 2017, 8 (186), 1–20.

³Dryden, M. D.; Rackus, D. D.; Shamsi, M. H.; Wheeler, A. Analytical Chemistry 2013, 85, 8809–8816.

4Wijethunga, P. A. L.; Nanayakkara, Y. S.; Kunchala, P.; Armstrong, D. W.; Moon, H. Anal. Chem. 2011, 83 (5), 1658–1664.

5Choi, K.; Boyacı, E.; Kim, J.; Seale, B.; Barrera-Arbelaez, L.; Pawliszyn, J.; Wheeler, A. R. Journal of Chromatography A 2016, 1444, 1–7.

6Shamsi, M. H.; Choi, K.; H.C., A.; Chamberlain, D. M.; Wheeler, A. R. Biosensors and Bioelectronics 2015, 77, 845–852.