Abstract

Automated Liquid Handling with Microfluidic Droplet-on-Demand Arrays

Elliot Hui, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, University of California-Irvine

Microfluidic emulsion droplets have proven to be capable vessels for nanoliter biochemical reactions. However, liquid handling in droplets has remained much less flexible than conventional pipetting into well plates. We present a droplet-on-demand dispenser array that can apportion arbitrary combinations of reagents into individual droplets. The dispensers draw from a standard-format array of wells and employ a pneumatic digital logic control system to enable binary addressing of large dispenser arrays. Droplets are tracked by machine vision as they wind past individual dispenser nozzles, allowing dispenser actuation to be fully automated. We envision the miniaturization of a wide variety of automated liquid handling protocols including high throughput screening applications.