Elevating single-particle encapsulation in droplet microfluidics by utilizing surface acoustic wave and flow control.

IF 6.1 2区工程技术 Q1 BIOCHEMICAL RESEARCH METHODS

Lab on a Chip Pub Date : 2025-04-30 DOI:10.1039/d4lc00787e

Chunhua He,Huasheng Zhuo,Canfeng Yang,Jianxin Wang,Xian Jiang,Fan Li,Chengxu Lin,Hai Yang,Tuying Yong,Xiangliang Yang,Zhiyong Liu,Yan Ma,Lei Nie,Guanglan Liao,Tielin Shi

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Target particle encapsulation is crucial in droplet microfluidics for high-throughput applications like single-cell sequencing and drug screening. However, it faces limitations, with encapsulation rates of only 10% to 30% due to suspension density and the inherent functionality of the chip being restricted by the Poisson distribution. This leads to reagent waste and reduced effectiveness in applications requiring ultra-high multiplexing or extensive particle analysis, due to the massive empty droplets. Here we propose a droplet microfluidic system integrating surface acoustic wave (SAW) and sheath flow control. Suspensions of varying concentrations within the channel are initially pre-focused by sheath fluid, and then acoustically focused into a linear arrangement by SAW. Spacing between particles can be regulated by modulating the sheath fluid, ensuring sequential encapsulation of cells or beads in individual droplets. Thermal shock generated by the SAW, particle and droplet frequency, and particle encapsulation ratio are all elaborately evaluated. The results demonstrate that our system reaches an exciting single-bead packing efficiency of up to 78%, and achieves a packing rate of more than 60% for both high and low concentrations of solutions for polystyrene microspheres, magnetic beads and H22 cells, 6 times higher than the theoretical upper limit of the conventional method and 1.8 times higher than the Poisson distribution. More importantly, our system is designed to be free of structural and parametric constraints, which is quite important in future practical application. Thus, our on-chip particle focusing control method and droplet microfluidic system provide great potential in biological applications needing a high single-particle encapsulation ratio in limited partitions, such as ultra-high multiplex digital biomolecular detection, single-cell analysis, drug screening, and single exosome detection.

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利用表面声波和流动控制提高液滴微流体中单颗粒的包封性。

靶颗粒包封是液滴微流体高通量应用的关键，如单细胞测序和药物筛选。然而，它面临着局限性，由于悬浮密度和芯片固有功能受泊松分布的限制，封装率仅为10%至30%。由于大量的空液滴，这会导致试剂浪费，并降低了需要超高复用或广泛颗粒分析的应用的有效性。本文提出了一种结合表面声波和鞘层流动控制的液滴微流控系统。管道内不同浓度的悬浮液最初由鞘液预先聚焦，然后由声表面波（SAW）在声学上聚焦成线性排列。颗粒之间的间距可以通过调节鞘液来调节，确保细胞或珠在单个液滴中的顺序封装。对SAW产生的热冲击、颗粒和液滴的频率以及颗粒的包封率进行了详细的评估。结果表明，该系统在聚苯乙烯微球、磁珠和H22电池的高、低浓度溶液中均达到了60%以上的填充率，比传统方法的理论上限高6倍，比泊松分布高1.8倍。更重要的是，我们的系统设计不受结构和参数约束，这对未来的实际应用非常重要。因此，我们的片上颗粒聚焦控制方法和液滴微流控系统在需要在有限分区内实现高单颗粒包封比的生物应用中具有很大的潜力，如超高复用数字生物分子检测、单细胞分析、药物筛选、单外泌体检测等。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Lab on a Chip 工程技术-化学综合

CiteScore

11.10

自引率

8.20%

发文量

434

审稿时长

2.6 months

期刊介绍： Lab on a Chip is the premiere journal that publishes cutting-edge research in the field of miniaturization. By their very nature, microfluidic/nanofluidic/miniaturized systems are at the intersection of disciplines, spanning fundamental research to high-end application, which is reflected by the broad readership of the journal. Lab on a Chip publishes two types of papers on original research: full-length research papers and communications. Papers should demonstrate innovations, which can come from technical advancements or applications addressing pressing needs in globally important areas. The journal also publishes Comments, Reviews, and Perspectives.