I'm working on a droplet-based microfluidic system for mammalian single cell encapsulation. Seems like HFE 7500 and FC-40 fluorinated oils are suitable for the task. However, the cost of the surfactants that I could find was very expensive. For example 008-FluoroSurfactant from RAN Biotech. almost costs 10 times more than gold! (more that $400 per gram).
Is there a cheaper commercial option or synthesizing the surfactant in the lab is the only cheap option.
Depending on your application you could try Krytox surfactants. We are using Krytox 157 FSH with HFE 7500 for generating droplets, however I am not sure on the biocompability.
Have also used the krytox surfactants for non bio work. Just need to make sure you have some salt in your aqueous phase. Also for the commercial biocompatible surfactants you can use significantly lower concept tractions then the stock solutions. We commonly used anywhere from 0.5% down to 0.1%. We also save and recycle oil + surfactant for several experiments.
Just to follow up, RAN Biotechnologies has recently introduced a new Chip-Free monodispersed droplet generation kit, including for cell encapsulation, and can save you on cost and time and without having to deal with microfluidic setup (chips/pumps/tubing/...). The kit is solely based on reagents. All you need is a pipette or a vortexer at the most in order to generate engineered droplets. Contact us at [email protected] or through our website, www.ranbiotechnologies.com
Hi, just saw the question, maybe a bit late. Have you consider the following option:Article Creating Biocompatible Oil-Water Interfaces without Synthesi...
This combines commercial krytox and Jeffamine surfactants and is biocompatible and a lot cheaper.
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