Light-mediated manipulation of droplets stabilized by fluorinated nanoparticles with photothermal effect

A light-mediated microfluidic device, comprising a plurality of active f-MNPs stabilized aqueous droplets and at least two lasers including an excitation laser and a sorting laser, wherein at least one laser of the at least two lasers is tuned to a plasmon resonance frequency for the f-MNPs, wherein the laser is the sorting laser, wherein laser excitation by the sorting laser enables the merge, movement, splitting, and sorting of f-MNPs stabilized droplets, and, optionally, a feature to mechanically split an isolated active f-MNPs stabilized aqueous droplet, wherein the f-MNPs comprise a plurality of metal nanoparticles or semiconductor nanoparticles having a size greater than 20 nm in cross-section, each of the nanoparticles being coated with fluorinated alkyl ligands that make the surface of the nanoparticles fluorophilic, wherein the f-MNPs function as surfactants for the stabilized aqueous droplets, wherein the f-MNPs stabilized aqueous droplets contain an aqueous core, wherein the f-MNPs stabilized aqueous droplets are suspended in a fluorinated solvent, wherein the diameter of the stabilized droplets ranges from 5 μm to 500 μm, wherein the droplets contain at least one biomolecule and chemical reagent.