Femtofluidic droplet manipulation now possible

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