Microfluidics to Macro Impact: Manufacturing Marvels

Taking advantage of the precise control over the fluid flows in microchannels, droplet microfluidics has enjoyed a tremendous success in enabling synthesis of highly uniform and uniquely structured liquid droplets and gas bubbles. Although some successes in translating microfluidic-based assays and diagnostics to commercial technologies have been achieved, few examples of such translations in the domain of materials manufacturing based on microfluidics have been accomplished, largely due to the very low throughput of droplet/bubble generations. Without solving the scale-up challenge, microfluidic-based materials synthesis will continue to remain an academic exercise that may not reach its true potential in transforming various sectors of industry including medicine, personal/home care products, separations and catalysis. In this talk, I will present the recent developments that we have made in enabling AI-augmented control of microfluidics and large-scale manufacturing of materials using microfluidics. By parallelizing flow focusing generation units coupled with flow resistors in solvent-resistant materials, microfluidic generation of droplets, bubbles, microcapsules and more recently lipid nanoparticles with precisely controlled size and morphology has been achieved at the liters-per-hr scale. Critical issues in enabling scale-up and outstanding challenges in future development of the scale-up devices will be discussed.