Microfluidic device and a method of manipulating droplets therein

Abstract

The disclosure provides a method of manipulating droplets in an electro-wetting on dielectric (EWOD) device. Electro-wetting electrodes of the EWOD device are selectively actuated to: cause first and second droplets in a fluid medium in the fluid chamber of the EWOD device to contact each other to form a droplet interface bilayer, the first droplet containing fluid of a first composition including a first solute species and the second droplet containing fluid of a second composition different to the first composition, maintain the first and second droplets contacting each other to maintain the droplet interface bilayer and thereby allow the first solute species to pass from the first droplet to the second droplet via the DIB; and cause the first droplet to separate from the second droplet. This method aspect results in transfer of solute from the first droplet to the second droplet. This provides a convenient way of altering the concentration of a particular component or components in a fluid droplet within an EWOD device. This allows, for example, an undesired solute species to be extracted from a reaction droplet or the undesired solute species to be diluted in the reaction droplet before the droplet undergoes further reaction steps.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.