The Nanopede: massively parallelized production of femtoliter droplets.

Started: 2017

Co-authors: Chris Kennedy, Ramakrishna Kotni, Sofie Kölling, Johan Bomer, Jasper  Lozeman, Detlef Lohse, Albert van den Berg, Alfons van Blaaderen, Mathieu Odijk

Location: BIOS-lab-on-a-chip, University of Twente, Netherlands – Physics of Fluids, University of Twente, Netherlands – Debye Institute, Utrecht University, Netherlands

Recently, a new method has been developed to produce large monodisperse population of droplets. Key is to ensure a droplet diameter independent of the flow rate in each parallel channel. This chip, the Millipede, raises high hope, but is limited to large droplets. Here we present a glass microfluidic chip, the Nanopede, designed on the same principle, downscaled to produce femtoliter droplets (diameter 1µm). Prior to chip design, theoretical analysis of flow and destabilization has been performed.