Microfluidic droplet grating for reconfigurable optical diffraction

This Letter presents a reconfigurable optical diffraction grating using multiphase droplets on a microfluidic chip. The uniform and evenly spaced circular droplets are generated by continuously dispersing two immiscible liquids into a T junction to produce plugs, which are then transformed into a circular shape at a sudden expansion of the microchannel. In experiments, the droplet grating shows a detection limit of similar to 6.3 x 10(-5) when used as an optofluidic refractometer and produces different colors as a color filter. Such a grating has the advantages of high stability and wide tunability in droplet size, grating period, and refractive index, making it promising for biochemical and biomaterial applications. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America