I am making droplet with microfluidic chip. The aqueous phase is the acrylamide solution and the carrier oil is HFE-7500 with Fluorosurfactant. In order to catalyze the polymerization of acrylamide, I need to add some TEMED into the carrier oil. But I found it seems to change the droplet size. I use the same condition for both aqueous phase and oil phase in two experiments. In the first experiment, I didn't add TEMED into the carrier oil, I can make droplet sized 60um. But after adding TEMED into the carrier oil, the droplet size becomes 54.5 um under the same flow rates. I was astonished and changed the carrier oil to the oil in my first experiment, which is TEMED free, but the droplet size became 56um only. I was using the same chip all the time, which is also aquapel treated. Can anyone please tell me if the TEMED interact with the detergent or the carrier oil, or the channel wall?
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