Virtual Particle Valve Toward Generation of Double-Cells Encapsulated Microdroplet

We propose a novel microfluidic technique for the high-efficient encapsulation of double cells into a droplet. For double-cells encapsulation into a droplet, we designed a microfluidic droplet generator (MFDG), consisting of the rhombic-shaped reservoir channel and constriction channel. The designed MFDG acts as a "virtual particles valve" because of the trapping of the single cell in the reservoir channel and releasing the cells when another cell flow into there. By tuning the flow rates for dispersed and continuous phases, we found that the double-cells encapsulation efficiency could be increased compared to the theoretical encapsulation efficiency derived by the Poisson distribution.