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Double emulsion droplets (DEs) are water/oil/water droplets that can be sorted via fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS), allowing for new opportunities in high-throughput cellular analysis, enzymatic screening, and synthetic biology. These applications require stable, uniform droplets with predictable microreactor volumes. However, predicting DE droplet size, shell thickness, and stability as a function of flow rate has remained challenging for monodisperse single core droplets and those containing biologically-relevant buffers, which influence bulk and interfacial properties. As a result, developing novel DE-based bioassays has typically required extensive initial optimization of flow rates to find conditions that produce stable droplets of the desired size and shell thickness. To address this challenge, we conducted systematic size parameterization quantifying how differences in flow rates and buffer properties (viscosity and interfacial tension at water/oil interfaces) alter droplet size and stability, across 6 inner aqueous buffers used across applications such as cellular lysis, microbial growth, and drug delivery, quantifying the size and shell thickness of >22 000 droplets overall. We restricted our study to stable single core droplets generated in a 2-step dripping–dripping formation regime in a straightforward PDMS device. Using data from 138 unique conditions (flow rates and buffer composition), we also demonstrated that a recent physically-derived size law of Wang et al. can accurately predict double emulsion shell thickness for >95% of observations. Finally, we validated the utility of this size law by using it to accurately predict droplet sizes for a novel bioassay that requires encapsulating growth media for bacteria in droplets. This work has the potential to enable new screening-based biological applications by simplifying novel DE bioassay development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a temperature controllable microfluidic device for the accurate measurement of temperature dependent interfacial tensions between two immiscible liquids. A localized temperature control system is integrated with the microfluidic platform to maintain an accurate temperature inside the device. The temperature uniformity and sensitivity are verified by both simulation and experimental results. Temperature dependent interfacial tensions are measured dynamically and rapidly, relying on quantitative analysis of the deformation and retraction dynamics of droplets under extensional flow. Our microfluidic tensiometry offers the capability of measuring temperature dependent interfacial tensions with precise and systematic temperature control in the range of room temperature to 70 °C, which is valuable for studying transient interfacial dynamics, interfacial reactions, and the surfactant adsorption process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mechanical response of particle-laden fluid interfaces is determined by measuring the internal pressures of particle-coated drops as a function of the drop volume. The particle monolayers undergoing compression-expansion cycles exhibit three distinct states: fluid state, jammed state, and buckled state. The P-V curves are compared to the surface pressure isotherms Pi-A that are measured using a Langmuir trough and a Wilhelmy plate on a flat water-decane interface covered with the same particles. We find that in the fluid and jammed states, the water drop in decane can be described by the Young-Laplace equation. Therefore in these relatively low compression states, the bulk pressure measurements can be used to deduce the interfacial tension of the droplets and yield similar surface pressure isotherms to the ones measured with the Wilhelmy plate. In the buckled state, the internal pressure of the drop yields a zero value, which is consistent with the zero interfacial tension measured with the Wilhelmy plate. Moreover we find that the compressibility in the jammed state does not depend on the particle size.