Maskless formation of chromatic-pattern barcodes in two-component microcapsules

We developed a microfluidic method to form chromatic-pattern barcodes without using photomasks as photolithography methods. Two different aqueous quantum dot solutions were loaded as liquid-state cores to form two-component microcapsules, which present as chromatic patterns under UV illumination for barcoding. This microfluidic method highly simplifies the formation of patterns without using any expensive alignment instruments and allows creating the easily discernible pattern-type barcodes with a high coding capacity up to tens of thousands. The easily discernible chromatic-pattern barcodes with a small size down to 40 mu m are very promising to conduct multiplexed biomolecular assays under microscopes in general labs.