Development of a microfluidic flow-focusing droplet generating device utilising rapid prototyping technique

In the recent decades, droplet-based microfluidics has emerged as a promising research area which covers various applications in a broad spectrum of fields such as chemical reactions, drug discovery, molecule synthesis and cell biology. This study proposes the implementation of a microfluidic droplet generating prototype using the popular flow-focusing geometry. The proposed system is fabricated based on a rapid prototyping technique, which significantly simplifies the fabrication process, reduces the production cost and shortens the time-to-market as compared with traditional techniques. The functionalities and characteristics of the prototype were carefully verified by simulations and practical experiments. The obtained results showed that the generation of droplets could be precisely controlled by adjusting the flow rate ratio between the dispersed phase and the continuous phase.