Vitrification is widely used in assisted reproduction technology via cell cryopreservation, which requires precise washing sequences and timings using several cryoprotectants (CPAs) to alleviate their osmotic shock. Compare with embryos, oocytes are more susceptible to osmotic stress and chemical toxicity and hence require more precise and complicated manual operations. In this paper, an automatic prototype system is established based on a novel planar microfluidic chip featuring superhydrophobic surfaces and poly-D-Lysine coating, which enables a single oocyte to be easily settled inside a ball-like droplet to facilitate the CPA exchange. Using the automatic equipment, the droplet concentration can be smoothly changed while maintaining a stable spherical shape. After the loading and removal of CPAs, the planar chip with an oocyte can be directly placed into liquid nitrogen for cryopreservation with similar oocyte survival rate as that obtained by manual operation. Compared with manual operation or other channel-based microfluidic technologies, this planar microfluidic method can avoid cell loss and the inconvenience of cell transfer and cryopreservation, which indicates its immense potential to serve as a facile and universal automatic solution for the vitrification of various precious cells.

玻璃化冷冻广泛用于通过细胞冷冻保存的辅助生殖技术，这需要使用几种冷冻保护剂 (CPA) 来实现精确的洗涤顺序和时间，以减轻其渗透冲击。与胚胎相比，卵母细胞更容易受到渗透压力和化学毒性的影响，因此需要更精确和复杂的人工操作。在本文中，基于具有超疏水表面和聚-D-赖氨酸涂层的新型平面微流控芯片建立了自动原型系统，该系统使单个卵母细胞能够轻松地固定在球状液滴内，以促进 CPA 交换。使用自动设备，可以在保持稳定的球形的同时平滑地改变液滴浓度。在加载和移除 CPA 之后，带有卵母细胞的平面芯片可直接放入液氮中冷冻保存，其卵母细胞存活率与人工操作获得的卵母细胞存活率相近。与手动操作或其他基于通道的微流控技术相比，这种平面微流控方法可以避免细胞丢失和细胞转移和冷冻保存的不便，这表明其作为各种珍贵细胞玻璃化的简便通用的自动化解决方案的巨大潜力.