From an article by AZOnano:

Ultrasonic forces to correctly pattern several microscopic water-based droplets have been used by researchers at the University of Bristol. Each droplet can be designed to conduct a biochemical experiment, which could lead to the development of highly efficient lab-on-a-chip devices that can then be applied in future applications involving clinical diagnostics and drug discovery.

In a recent study published in Nature Communications, an interdisciplinary team from University of Bristol’s departments of chemistry, physics and engineering, have demonstrated a non-contact technique to design chemically encoded aqueous droplets into a 2D array under water.

The technique applies ultrasonic forces integrated with droplet technology to spontaneously produce a very uniform pattern of low surface tension functional water-based droplets. The arrays can be assumed to be a new type of highly parallel platform for conducting high-throughput analysis in water for drug discovery, protein crystallization, and clinical diagnostics.

The ability to carry out thousands of microscale experiments concurrently will pave the way for more efficient lab-on-a-chip technologies.

 

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Image Credit: University of Bristol

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