Physics Seminar Series 293 (1/27/17)

David Weitz, Harvard University 

Abstact:

This talk will discuss the use of microfluidic devices to precisely control the flow and mixing of fluids to make drops, and will explore a variety of uses of these drops. These drops can be used to create new materials that are difficult to synthesize with any other method. These materials exhibit fascinating physical properties and have great potential for practical uses. I will also show how the exquisite control afforded by microfluidic devices provides enabling technology to use droplets as microreactors to perform reactions at remarkably high rates using very small quantities of fluids. This allows them to be used to explore fundamental properties of systems biology.