Luis Ruben Soenksen just came back from the the Global Engage Microfluidics Congress in Philadelphia and here is waht he saw is relevant for our community:
- Digital microfluidics is definitely a cool topic (but not the most popular)
- Droplet based microfluidics is super hype right now. Pico-liter and nano-liter droplets for single cell analysis and other things are what people want now. The microfluidics, biology and medical community see a lot of value on being able to handle drops from 20ul down to 1 picoliter. A device incapable of being scaled down to these sizes is not going to be competitive.
- Cost and long term scalability is a main concern, and that’s where the strength of this project has it’s greatest value (I think), the EWOD approach with a cartridge is for SURE the right way to go.
- High Speed on moving droplets, easy multiplexing, and high end stimulation and sensing (electrical & optical) capabilities is something that we need to incorporate sooner rather than later consider for example Professor Richard Fair from Duke (http://microfluidics.ee.duke.edu) he sold his system to Illumina because of this to do a pathogen sensitivity platform.
- Other people to watch is this group from Harvard led by Prof. Robert M. Westervel. These guys are heavy on electronics and have something that I find amazing (http://meso.seas.harvard.edu/digitalmicrofluidics.html) They use something like a CCD to do this via dielectrophoresis (DEP) and using an inmisible phase such as oil, I think we can do EWOD the same way, we just need to find a cheap multi-electrode array to use. Also if we go down to smaller scale electrodes the force needed to move a drop decreases which can enable us to go down in voltage and to use cheaper surface coatings that are more scalable and robust.
The review “digital microfluidics as portable platforms for lab-on a-chip applications” that was published very recently, I think is a good way to get a sense of what is really valuable and a way to really move forward on this.
Thank you Luis for sharing.