I designed a microfluidic based droplet generator based on a design from the Lee lab. After breaking my first one, I was able to get a chip secured to the scope. Nothing like spending an hour building something then dropping the keyboard on it. That’s fun.

In any case, I cut the device on the laser cutter, assembled it and ran oil and water through it. I don’t know if we will be able to make the particles at the size I want, but we can make monodisperse droplets and that’s the first step.

My goal is to combine this droplet generator with an in situ polymerization technique like this Langmuir article, “Semipermeable Elastic Microcapsules for Gas Capture and Sensing.”

If you want to see how it all came together, I made a little video.