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Open Access
Featured
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Letter |
Self-coalescing flows in microfluidics for pulse-shaped delivery of reagents
Characterization of a capillary flow phenomenon termed self-coalescence leads to the development of scalable, compact microfluidic devices that could see application in diagnostics, high-throughput screening and biological assays.
- Onur Gökçe
- , Samuel Castonguay
- & Emmanuel Delamarche
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News & Views |
Blood vessels on a chip
To understand how blood vessels form and function, scientists require reproducible systems that mimic living tissues. An innovative approach based on microfabricated vessels provides a key step towards this goal.
- Claudio Franco
- & Holger Gerhardt
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Research Highlights |
High-throughput cell stretcher
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News & Views |
Analog-to-digital drug screening
Current methods for screening libraries of compounds for biological activity are rather cumbersome, slow and imprecise. A method that breaks up a continuous flow of a compound's solution into droplets offers radical improvements.
- Robert C. R. Wootton
- & Andrew J. deMello
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Article |
A sensing array of radically coupled genetic ‘biopixels’
Thousands of quorum-sensing Escherichia coli colonies are synchronized over centimetres using redox signalling to create ‘biopixels’ that can sense trace amounts of arsenic in water.
- Arthur Prindle
- , Phillip Samayoa
- & Jeff Hasty
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Research Highlights |
Rapid HIV test for remote areas
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News & Views |
Bubble wrap of cell-like aggregates
Using a microfluidic device, tiny polymeric capsules have been made in which different compounds can be isolated in separate, membrane-bound compartments — a prerequisite for the development of artificial cell aggregates.
- Takamasa Harada
- & Dennis E. Discher
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Letter |
Substrate-enhanced supercooling in AuSi eutectic droplets
Supercooling is a phenomenon by which a liquid remains in its fluid phase well below its melting point. Supercooling can be inhibited by the presence of a solid surface, whereby crystalline surfaces cause adjacent atoms in the liquid to become ordered, inducing crystal nucleation of the melt. Here it is shown that a particular surface ordering of gold atoms on top of a silicon substrate can stabilize the liquid phase of a gold-silicon eutectic droplet, and thus enhance supercooling.
- T. U. Schülli
- , R. Daudin
- & A. Pasturel
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News & Views |
Exploiting elephants in the room
Microfluidic devices have many applications in chemistry and biology, but practical hitches associated with their use are often overlooked. One such device that optimizes catalysts tackles these issues head-on.
- Robert C. R. Wootton
- & Andrew J. deMello
A microfluidic transistor for automatic control of liquids