Abstract
Digital microfluidics (DMF) shows a great application prospect in droplet manipulation. However, the fouling of the hydrophobic surfaces caused by biomolecules limits its development. In this study, we report a new strategy to enhance the functionality and anti-biofouling performance of the DMF chip by using a hydrophobic liquid surface (HLS) rather than a regular hydrophobic solid surface (HSS). The DMF chip with such a configuration can efficiently drive various liquids with full-function operations. Moreover, our DMF chips can directly manipulate biomolecular droplets without restrictive conditions like adding surfactants or filling with silicon oil. The liquid-liquid contact between the droplet and the hydrophobic surface ensures that the non-specifically adsorbed biomolecules move along with the droplet. Thus, no residue is left behind to ruin the hydrophobicity of the hydrophobic surface. Meanwhile, the long-term reversibility of contact angle change and stability of droplet movement demonstrate the excellent ability against biofouling. In addition, high- and low-temperature tests also show the temperature stability of the HLS. Finally, a biochemical application, plasmid extraction of Escherichia coli (E.coli) cells, is successfully carried out on the DMF chip with HLS as a proof of its usability. This HLS is expected to offer versatile functionalities and anti-biofouling performance for DMF chips in handling biomolecular droplets.
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Acknowledgements
This work was partially funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No: 31927802); the Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Committee (Grant No. RCJC20200714114436046); the Jiaxing Research Institute (Grant No.: SUSTECHJX2022007). Special thanks to the technicians from SUSTech Core Research Facilities, Rui Zhang, Xuhan Ma and Yao Wang, for the chip fabrication support.
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Zhen Liu & Rifei Chen: Conceptualization; Methodology; writing - original draft; writing - review & editing. Kaicheng Huang: Software. Haiping Zhu: Resources. Jiaze Liu: Resources. Chunhui Wu: writing - review & editing. Liqiu Wang: Supervision; writing - review & editing. Xing Cheng: Supervision; Conceptualization; writing - review & editing; Funding acquisition.
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Liu, Z., Chen, R., Huang, K. et al. Anti-biofouling hydrophobic liquid surface for plasmid extraction on a digital microfluidics chip. Microfluid Nanofluid 30, 21 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-026-02873-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-026-02873-4