T-junction Splitting of Droplets from Nanoliter to Femtoliter and Manipulation of Single Nanoparticles on Microfluidic Chips

In this paper, we got femtoliter volume droplet by splitting of nanoliter droplet at a T-junction channel, and the volume of the daughter droplet was not limited by the channel size. We use this droplet splitting system to entrap several fluorescent nanospheres, which show great potential to manipulate and observe single nanoparticles independently. The influences of fluid flow rate, channel geometry, addition of surfactant on droplet splitting were carefully studied. The droplet splitting in our T-junction chip has a small volume, monodisperse size, and can be produced efficiently, orderly, controllablely.