A droplet-based, composite PDMS/glass capillary microfluidic system for evaluating protein crystallization conditions by microbatch and vapor-diffusion methods with on-chip X-ray diffraction.

This paper reports a composite microfluidic system for performing protein crystallization trials in nanoliter aqueous droplets inside capillaries suitable for X-ray diffraction and the evaluation of the quality of the crystals directly by on-chip X-ray diffraction. Crystallization conditions can be screened with both microbatch and vapor-diffusion techniques by eliminating evaporation of solutions and by controlling diffusion of water between droplets.