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Updated: Oct 10, 2025

High Throughput Single-cell and Multiple-cell Micro-encapsulation
Published on: June 15, 2012
Active single cell encapsulation using SAW overcoming the limitations of Poisson distribution
Andreas Link1, John S McGrath1, Mustafa Zaimagaoglu1
1Division of Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Oakfield Avenue, G12 8LT Glasgow, UK. Thomas.Franke@glasgow.ac.uk.
Abstract:
We demonstrate the use of an acoustic device to actively encapsulate single red blood cells into individual droplets in a T-junction. We compare the active encapsulation with the passive encapsulation depending on the number of loaded cells as well as the created droplet volumes. This method overcomes the Poisson limitation statistical loading of cells for the passive encapsulation. In our experiments we reach a single cell encapsulation efficiency of 97.9 ± 2.1% at droplet formation rates exceeding 15 Hz.

