Embedded droplet printing in yield-stress fluids

Microfluidic tools and techniques for manipulating fluid droplets have become core to many scientific and technological fields. Despite the plethora of existing approaches to fluidic manipulation, non-Newtonian fluid phenomena are rarely taken advantage of. Here we introduce embedded droplet printing—a system and methods for the generation, trapping, and processing of fluid droplets within yield-stress fluids, materials that exhibit extreme shear thinning. This technique allows for the manipulation of droplets under conditions that are simply unattainable with conventional microfluidic methods, namely the elimination of exterior influences including convection and solid boundaries. Because of this, we believe embedded droplet printing approaches an ideal for the experimentation, processing, or observation of many samples in an “absolutely quiescent” state, while also removing some troublesome aspects of microfluidics including the use of surfactants and the complexity of device manufacturing. We characterize a model material system to understand the process of droplet generation inside yield-stress fluids and develop a nascent set of archetypal operations that can be performed with embedded droplet printing. With these principles and tools, we demonstrate the benefits and versatility of our method, applying it toward the diverse applications of pharmaceutical crystallization, microbatch chemical reactions, and biological assays.