Parallelized ultra-high throughput microfluidic emulsifier for multiplex kinetic assays.

Droplet-based microfluidic technologies are powerful tools for applications requiring high-throughput, for example, in biochemistry or material sciences. Several systems have been proposed for the high-throughput production of mono-disperse emulsions by parallelizing multiple droplet makers. However, these systems have two main limitations: (1) they allow the use of only a single disperse phase; (2) they are based on multiple layer microfabrication techniques. We present here a pipette-and-play solution offering the possibility of manipulating simultaneously 10 different disperse phases on a single layer device. This system allows high-throughput emulsion production using aqueous flow rates of up to 26 ml/h (> 110 000 drops/s) leading to emulsions with user-defined complex chemical composition. We demonstrate the multiplex capabilities of our system by measuring the kinetics of beta-galactosidase in droplets using nine different concentrations of a fluorogenic substrate. (C) 2015 Author(s).