High-Efficiency and High-Throughput On-Chip Exchange of the Continuous Phase in Droplet Microfluidic Systems

This article describes an integrated platform for the on-chip exchange of the continuous phase in droplet microfluidic systems. The drops used in this work are stabilized by amphiphilic nanoparticles. For some characterizations and applications of these nanoparticle-stabilized drops, including the measurement of adsorption dynamics of nanoparticles to the droplet surface, it is necessary to change the composition of the continuous phase from that used during the droplet generation process. Thus far, no work has reported the exchange of the continuous phase for a large number (>1 million) of drops in a microfluidic system. This article describes the design and characterization of a high-efficiency and high-throughput on-chip exchanger of the continuous phase in a continuous-flow droplet microfluidic system. The efficiency of exchange was higher than 97%. The throughput was greater than 1 million drops/min, and this can be increased further by increasing the number of parallel exchangers used. Because drops are injected into the exchanger in a continuous-flow manner, the method is directly compatible with automation to further increase its reliability and potential scale-up.