Abstract

Engineering Droplets with Microfluidics

L Q Wang, Professor, The University of Hong Kong

Droplets of nanoliter and subnanoliter are useful in a wide range of applications, particularly when their size is uniform and controllable. Examples include biochemistry, biomedical engineering, food industry, pharmaceuticals, and material sciences. One example of their many fundamental medical applications is the therapeutic delivery system for delivering site-specific therapy to targeted organs in the body and as the carriers for newer therapeutic options. The size, the size distribution and the effective manipulation of droplets at a scale of nano, pico and even femto liters are critical in all these applications. We report a glass capillary microfluidic system for synthesizing precisely controlled monodisperse multiple emulsions and their applications in synthesizing nanofluids, engineering materials, embolic particles and colloidosome systems.