Integrated microfluidic pipette tips for pump-free generation of highly uniform droplets

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Abstract Droplet microfluidics is transforming biomedical and life sciences by enabling high-throughput, quantitative analysis of molecules and cells while minimizing reagent consumption. Despite these advantages, the widespread adoption of droplet microfluidics in biological and clinical settings has been hindered by complex device fabrication, as well as external pumps and precisely controlled fluidic systems. To address these challenges, we introduce the integrated microfluidic pipette tip (IMPTip), a simple and robust platform for pump-free generation of highly uniform water-in-oil droplets. The IMPTip produces monodisperse droplets with diameters as small as 30 µ m (coefficient of variation <4%) and supports a broad tuneable size range from 30 to 800 µ m through geometry-driven step emulsification. Droplet formation is largely insensitive to flow rate, maintaining uniformity across a wide operating range of 0.2–50 µ l min −1 , thereby eliminating the need for precise flow control. Bypassing the need for external pumps, continuous-phase oil setups, and time-consuming flow rate tuning under a microscope, the IMPTip offers unprecedented simplicity and ease of use for producing uniform droplets. This approach has the potential to significantly broaden access to droplet microfluidics for researchers in biological and clinical fields, streamlining workflows for applications such as digital polymerase chain reaction, drug screening, single-cell analysis, and early disease diagnosis.

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