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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2007 Apr 12.
Published in final edited form as: Anal Chem. 2006 Jul 15;78(14):4839–4849. doi: 10.1021/ac0601718

Figure 2.

Figure 2

Merging within a microfluidic device using a hydrophobic side channel. (a) When the side channel was hydrophobic (silanized PDMS), contamination occurred (for 5 out of 5 experiments) when the side channel was large (width of 200 μm and height of 250 μm). (b) However, merging did not occur (for 4 out of 4 experiments) when the side channel was too small (width and height of 20 μm). Another approach for merging was to form droplets of CaCl2 at the same frequency as the passing plug. (c) At the junction, the carrier fluid between the passing plugs flows into the sidearm to break off a droplet from the CaCl2 stream. (d) Consistent merging was obtained for UCaCl2/Uaqueous = 0.125 at various water fractions wf (▵). At a constant wf = 0.4, high percentage of merging (95%) was measured only for UCaCl2/Uaqueous = 0.125 (▪). Each symbol represents measurements from 100 plugs. See text for definitions and details. All scale bars are for 100 μm.