Structural formation of oil-in-water (O/W) and water-in-oil-in-water (W/O/W) droplets in PDMS device using protrusion channel without hydrophilic surface treatment

This paper presents a simple method of droplet formation using liquids that easily wet polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) surfaces without any surface treatment. Using only structural features and uniform flow focusing, Oil-in-Water (O/W) and Water-in-Oil-in-Water (W/O/W) droplets were formed in the full PDMS structure. Extrusion channel and three-dimensional flow focusing resulted in effective fluidic conditions for droplet formation and the droplet size could be precisely controlled by controlling the flow rate of each phase. The proposed structure can be utilized as an important element for droplet based research, as well as a droplet generator.