Although the great potential of droplet based microfluidic technologies for routine applications in industry and academia has been successfully demonstrated over the past years, its inherent potential is not fully exploited till now. Especially regarding to the droplet generation reproducibility and stability, two pivotally important parameters for successful applications, there is still a need for improvement. This is even more considerable when droplets are created to investigate tissue fragments or cell cultures (e.g. suspended cells or 3D cell cultures) over days or even weeks. In this study we present microfluidic chips composed of a plasma coated polymer, which allow surfactants‐free, highly reproducible and stable droplet generation from fluids like cell culture media. We demonstrate how different microfluidic designs and different flow rates (and flow rate ratios) affect the reproducibility of the droplet generation process and display the applicability for a wide variety of bio(techno)logically relevant media.

中文翻译：

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生物相关流体应用中液滴生成再现性的参数研究

尽管基于液滴的微流体技术在工业和学术界的常规应用中的巨大潜力在过去几年中得到了成功证明，但其内在潜力直到现在还没有得到充分利用。特别是关于液滴生成的重现性和稳定性，这是成功应用的两个关键参数，仍然需要改进。当创建液滴以在数天甚至数周内研究组织碎片或细胞培养物（例如悬浮细胞或 3D 细胞培养物）时，这一点甚至更加重要。在这项研究中，我们展示了由等离子涂层聚合物组成的微流控芯片，它允许从细胞培养基等流体中产生不含表面活性剂、高度可重复且稳定的液滴。