Abstract
Droplet-based microfluidics is an emerging interdisciplinary field with broad applications. Accurate control of droplet volumes allows to perform quantitative detection with high throughput. But there are still many issues with the precision and practicability of droplet generation when the device suffers from inevitable disturbances or pressure oscillations. When the droplets of certain sizes are further desired, the passive system cannot generate droplets accurately and uniformly with a significant deviation between the actual volume and target. In this work, we propose the usage of Quantitative Phase Imaging (QPI) technique for real-time detection of flowing droplets, which can provide a precise 3-D measurement of droplet volume as a feedback signal. Incorporated with a closed-loop feedback control scheme to constantly monitor the instantaneous volume error and regulate fluidic pressures to keep the droplet size towards the setpoint value. The PID feedback control can develop higher accuracy and monodispersity of on-demand droplet generation, together with enhanced stability to resist internal or external perturbations, which could promise a predictable outcome in complex conditions of practical microfluidics-based systems.
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