Abstract

Microfluidic systems have gained popularity as key experimental tool in the chemical and biological sciences due to a range of features. These include the ability process small reagent/sample volumes, enhanced analytical performance, reduced instrumental footprint, low unit cost, facile integration of functional components within monolithic substrates and the capacity to exploit atypical fluid behaviour to control chemical and biological operations in both time and space. Droplet-based or segmented-flow microfluidics exploits the spontaneous formation of droplets within microchannel environments to perform a variety of analytical processes. These droplets have sub-nanoliter volumes and act as an individual, isolated reaction vessels. Variation of the cross-sectional dimensions of microchannels can be used to regulate droplet volumes, and flow rate variation allows control of reagent concentrations. Importantly, droplets can be generated at kHz frequencies, meaning that millions of individual reactions can be processed in very short times. In my talk I will report recent advances in this area with particular reference to high throughput reaction screening and cell-based assays.