Kinetic Switching of the Concentration/Separation Behavior of Microdroplets

This work demonstrates that the solute concentration inside 100 micrometer-sized aqueous microdroplets can be controlled by adjusting the time required for the aqueous nanometer-sized droplets (nanodroplet) or reverse micelles to pass over the surface of the microdroplet. The kinetics of molecular transport between the microdroplets and the nanodroplets was investigated by utilizing a microdroplet array, and on the basis of these results, a control over the concentration selectivity of the contents of the microdroplet was achieved. This method is operationally simple and can be potentially applied as a pretreatment method for microanalytical systems that require high-density microdroplet arrays. This method can also be utilized for parallel small sample analyses such as single cell analysis.