November 2021
Spotlight Summary by Salvatore Girardo
Droplet microfluidic generation of a million optical microparticle barcodes
The identification and tracking of products in today’s globalized economy might be impossible without barcodes. In the same fashion, following the advances in microfluidic lab-on-a-chip systems, new tools are needed to tag, identify and track specific biomolecules, biochemical reactions and cells into multiplexed high-throughput bioassays. Microparticles with distinctive features serve this scope. Nevertheless, new strategies and methods are needed to mark them individually with a unique combination of physical and optical properties for their distinctive identification, while enabling their cost-effective massive and fast production.
Here the authors present a low-cost, simple and high-throughput droplet microfluidic-based method for the production of novel barcode composite microbeads at kilohertz rates. Multiple polystyrene fluorescently-doped particles, working as whispering gallery mode cavities, were embedded inside polyacrylamide microbeads. A unique correlation exists between the diameter of the embedded particles and the excited resonance peaks, providing an identifiable signature. The combination of particles with stochastically distributed diameters served to generate millions of spectral signatures used as optically readable barcodes. The flexibility of the presented method allows a fine and tailored adjustment of the composite microbead final properties to match different requirements. This can empower their use in existing and forthcoming microfluidic platforms for disparate biochemical, biophysical and biomedical applications.
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Here the authors present a low-cost, simple and high-throughput droplet microfluidic-based method for the production of novel barcode composite microbeads at kilohertz rates. Multiple polystyrene fluorescently-doped particles, working as whispering gallery mode cavities, were embedded inside polyacrylamide microbeads. A unique correlation exists between the diameter of the embedded particles and the excited resonance peaks, providing an identifiable signature. The combination of particles with stochastically distributed diameters served to generate millions of spectral signatures used as optically readable barcodes. The flexibility of the presented method allows a fine and tailored adjustment of the composite microbead final properties to match different requirements. This can empower their use in existing and forthcoming microfluidic platforms for disparate biochemical, biophysical and biomedical applications.
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Article Information
Droplet microfluidic generation of a million optical microparticle barcodes
Paul H. Dannenberg, Jie Wang, Yue Zhuo, Sangyeon Cho, Kwon-Hyeon Kim, and Seok-Hyun Yun
Opt. Express 29(23) 38109-38118 (2021) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF