A study on encapsulation of single-cell into fixed droplets using triangular microwells

Microfluidic devices using droplets are possible to perform high throughput screening of single-cell samples through encapsulating cells into droplets. In conventional encapsulation methods, devices have T-junction and flow-focusing geometry for droplet generation. Those techniques are difficult to achieve uniform distribution of cells, or to place a single-cell in droplets. Moreover, during screening samples, it is necessary to have a mechanism to hold droplets at one place for long time. It is, however, slightly hard to add such a function in conventional devices. Thus, we propose a new encapsulation method of single-cell using triangular microwells. In this approach, each single-cell is isolated, encapsulated, and held at one place using triangular microwells. This approach has benefits that the droplets size can be regulated by the size of microwells. In addition, the optimization of encapsulation is easier than conventional methods because the flow rate of oil phase does not affect to the encapsulation.