- Isozaki, A
- Nakagawa, Y
- Loo, MH
- Shibata, Y
- Tanaka, N
- Setyaningrum, DL
- Park, J-W
- Shirasaki, Y
- Mikami, H
- Huang, D
- Tsoi, H
- Riche, CT
- Ota, T
- Miwa, H
- Kanda, Y
- Ito, T
- Yamada, K
- Iwata, O
- Suzuki, K
- Ohnuki, S
- Ohya, Y
- Kato, Y
- Hasunuma, T
- Matsusaka, S
- Yamagishi, M
- Yazawa, M
- Uemura, S
- Nagasawa, K
- Watarai, H
- Di Carlo, D
- Goda, K
- et al.
Droplet microfluidics has become a powerful tool in precision medicine, green biotechnology, and cell therapy for single-cell analysis and selection by virtue of its ability to effectively confine cells. However, there remains a fundamental trade-off between droplet volume and sorting throughput, limiting the advantages of droplet microfluidics to small droplets (<10 pl) that are incompatible with long-term maintenance and growth of most cells. We present a sequentially addressable dielectrophoretic array (SADA) sorter to overcome this problem. The SADA sorter uses an on-chip array of electrodes activated and deactivated in a sequence synchronized to the speed and position of a passing target droplet to deliver an accumulated dielectrophoretic force and gently pull it in the direction of sorting in a high-speed flow. We use it to demonstrate large-droplet sorting with ~20-fold higher throughputs than conventional techniques and apply it to long-term single-cell analysis of Saccharomyces cerevisiae based on their growth rate.