A biocompatible surfactant film for stable microfluidic droplets

Area of Science:

• Biotechnology
• Materials Science
• Biochemistry

Background:

• Droplets are valuable micro-compartments for analyzing individual biological samples like nucleic acids and cells.
• Droplet coalescence is a significant challenge, limiting applications, especially under harsh conditions or for long-term stability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a versatile film-forming surfactant for creating robustly stable droplets.
• To address the challenge of droplet coalescence in droplet-based analytical techniques.

Main Methods:

• A novel surfactant was designed, forming a film at the droplet interface via covalent interactions.
• The film involves a custom fluorinated polymer and a diol-containing aqueous macromolecule.
• The surfactant's ability to stabilize droplets during polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was evaluated.

Main Results:

• The developed surfactant forms robustly stable droplets, preventing coalescence.
• The interfacial film provides significant stability, even during PCR.
• The surfactant system is biocompatible.

Conclusions:

• The film-forming surfactant offers a robust solution to droplet instability.
• This surfactant chemistry serves as a model for developing new random copolymer-based surfactants.
• The technology has potential applications in single-molecule and single-cell analysis requiring high droplet stability.