Femtofluidic droplet manipulation now possible
Modular toolbox turns droplets into microreactors with volumes one billion times smaller than microtitre plate wells
We’ve had microfluidics. We’ve even had nanofluidics. But now, scientists have gone a step smaller by pushing femtofluidics into the realms of possibility.
Droplet microfluidics enables assays and reactions to be performed in droplets of reagent that are just a few nanolitres or picolitres in volume. The main advantages of this are that reactions can be performed in a massively parallel manner using hardly any reagent, and further miniaturisation to give femtolitre droplets promises to enable even higher-throughput with even lower reagent use.
The first devices capable of generating femtolitre-sized droplets were developed in 2005, but since then their use has been severely limited by a lack of technology for the subsequent manipulation of the droplets.
This article provides a link to coverage by Chemistry World
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