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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 4, 2025

Aqueous Droplets Used as Enzymatic Microreactors and Their Electromagnetic Actuation

Aqueous Droplets Used as Enzymatic Microreactors and Their Electromagnetic Actuation

Published on: August 28, 2017

A droplet acoustofluidic platform for time-controlled microbead-based reactions.

Zhenhua Liu¹, Anna Fornell, Maria Tenje¹

¹Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Science for Life Laboratory, Uppsala University, SE-752 37 Uppsala, Sweden.

Biomicrofluidics

|May 24, 2021

Summary

This study introduces a droplet acoustofluidic chip for precise control of enzymatic reactions. It uses physical bead removal to stop reactions, enabling off-line analysis without chemical inhibitors.

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Last Updated: Nov 4, 2025

Aqueous Droplets Used as Enzymatic Microreactors and Their Electromagnetic Actuation

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Published on: August 28, 2017

A Femtoliter Droplet Array for Massively Parallel Protein Synthesis from Single DNA Molecules

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Published on: June 20, 2020

A Microfluidic Platform for Precision Small-volume Sample Processing and Its Use to Size Separate Biological Particles with an Acoustic Microdevice

A Microfluidic Platform for Precision Small-volume Sample Processing and Its Use to Size Separate Biological Particles with an Acoustic Microdevice

Published on: November 23, 2015

Area of Science:

Biochemistry
Microfluidics
Chemical Engineering

Background:

Droplet microfluidics enables high-throughput chemical reaction characterization.
In-line optical detection in droplet microfluidics faces challenges with low concentrations and system demands.
Chemical inhibitors used to control reaction times can interfere with optical readouts.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop a droplet acoustofluidic chip for time-controlled reactions.
To enable off-line optical readout for enzymatic assays.
To demonstrate a novel method for controlling reaction time by physical enzyme removal.

Main Methods:

Generated droplets containing substrate on a microfluidic chip.
Introduced enzyme-coupled microbeads via pico-injection to initiate enzymatic conversion.
Utilized acoustophoresis at a channel bifurcation to separate microbeads from reaction products, controlling reaction time by outlet selection.

Main Results:

Successfully demonstrated time-controlled enzymatic conversion of fluorescein diphosphate to fluorescein using alkaline phosphatase.
Showcased the physical removal of enzyme-carrying microbeads to stop reactions, enabling collection of product-containing droplets.
Achieved fluorescence readout of the enzymatic conversion in a separate assay chip, validating the off-line analysis approach.

Conclusions:

The developed droplet acoustofluidic platform allows for precise, time-controlled enzymatic assays.
Physical removal of enzyme-carrying microbeads offers an alternative to chemical inhibitors for stopping reactions.
This method facilitates off-line optical readout, overcoming limitations of in-line detection for low-concentration analytes.