• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.178-185
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• 2009

Simple and highly efficient droplet merging method is proposed, which enables two nanoliter or picoliter droplets to merge regularly in a straight microchannel. Using a cross channel with inflows of one oil phase through the main channel and two water phases through the side channels, two droplets of different sizes can be generated alternatingly in accordance with flow rate difference of the water phases. It is shown that for a fixed oil phase flow rate, the flow rate of one water phase required for alternating droplet generation increases linearly with the flow rate of another water phase. By this method, the droplets are merged with 100 % efficiency without any additional driving forces.