Statistical Energy Minimization Theory for Systems of Drop-Carrier Particles
Ryan Shijie Du, Lily Liu, Simon Ng, Sneha Sambandam, Bernardo Hernandez Adame, Hansell Perez, Kyung Ha, Claudia Falcon, Joseph de Rutte, Dino Di Carlo, and Andrea L. Bertozzi
Physical Review E, July 2021
Abstract
Drop-carrier particles (DCPs) are solid microparticles designed to capture uniform microscale drops of a target solution without using costly microfluidic equipment and techniques. DCPs are useful for automated and high-throughput biological assays and reactions, as well as single-cell analyses. Surface energy minimization provides a theoretical prediction for the volume distribution in pairwise droplet splitting, showing good agreement with macroscale experiments. We develop a probabilistic pairwise interaction model for a system of such DCPs exchanging fluid volume to minimize surface energy. This leads to a theory for the number of pairwise interactions of DCPs needed to reach a uniform volume distribution. Heterogeneous mixtures of DCPs with different sized particles require fewer interactions to reach a minimum energy distribution for the system. We optimize the DCP geometry for minimal required target solution and uniformity in droplet volume.
Topics
Theory
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