Tiny Droplets, Big Impact: The Rise of Digital Microfluidics
- washburnadam
- Jun 20
- 4 min read
If you've ever rubbed a balloon on your shirt and watched it bend a stream of water from a faucet, you've witnessed an elegant display of electrostatic force. That same principle—the ability to control fluids using electric fields—is at the heart of digital microfluidics (DMF). Instead of plumbing and pumps, DMF uses electrical signals to manipulate tiny droplets on a surface. This technology is not only clever—it’s potentially transformative.
I had the opportunity to interview CEO Dr. Alexandros Sklavounos from Blue Ocean Technologies, a Toronto-based startup, where digital microfluidics is being put to work to develop rapid, point-of-care blood testing and other assays.
A University Spinout to Real-World Deployment
Founded in 2022 as a spinout from the University of Toronto, Blue Ocean Technologies was founded by Professor Aaron Wheeler, a chemist and entrepreneur with a track record in microfluidics. Co-founder and CEO Sklavounos, a former PhD student of Wheeler’s, helped launch the company to commercialize the technology he developed during his doctoral work. Their mission is to develop digital microfluidics for point-of-care blood testing, making diagnostics faster, easier, and more accessible.
Blue Ocean Technologies was not the first startup from the Wheeler lab to focus on digital microfluidics. The company Sci-bots—founded in 2016—focused on developing microfluidic hardware and control systems, including their DMF platform, DropBot. DropBot, a modular and programmable digital microfluidic controller, became one of the flagship technologies in this space, enabling advanced fluid manipulation for research and development. Today, DropBot systems are used across six continents by researchers and innovators in both academia and industry, underscoring the platform’s versatility and global impact. Sci-bots is now combined with Blue Ocean as a subsidiary and provides some of the deep experience in the digital microfluidic space. The combined companies operate as a single team and share work across multiple fronts: R&D, controller design, and device manufacturing.
What Makes DMF So Powerful?
As illustrated by the simple balloon-and-water trick, the right types of electric fields can move aqueous solutions in directed paths. Digital microfluidics accomplishes this with small electrode pads on a microfabricated surface. By applying a potential to each electrode, it's possible to move droplets and allow them to split, merge, and mix.
Software control of the microfluidics makes it possible to add on functionality such as magnets, cameras, and sensors. As a result, DMF systems become plug-and-play devices that perform complex lab functions on a benchtop, fully automated. This makes DMF particularly well-suited for tasks such as mixing reagents and handling sticky or complex fluids like whole blood. It also enables the automation of sample preparation, molecular library generation, signal detection, and other tasks.
Public Partnerships, Private Drive
Aaron Wheeler’s scientific reputation and the work of Sklavounos and colleagues has helped secure both talent and institutional support. Canadian agencies have played a key role, with subsidies, hiring grants, and intellectual property guidance from groups like NRC, IRAP, and MITACS. There has also been support for Blue Ocean’s talent pipeline, helping the company scale up efficiently.
In addition to the public funding, collaborating with organizations has been central to Blue Ocean’s strategy. Institutions like Sunnybrook Hospital have provided real-world samples and customer feedback, helping the team refine their systems for practical use in clinical settings.
At present, the foundational patents behind DMF have expired, and other companies have entered the DMF arena. However, Blue Ocean Technologies has remained at the forefront of DMF by bringing two key advantages to the market. First, the team has deep technical knowledge in handling complex biological fluids. Second, they have over two decades of cumulative development experience and knowledge. This is in no small part due to the use of Sci-bots’ instruments around the world in academic and industrial settings.
Looking Ahead: Portable, Affordable, Everywhere
Blue Ocean’s long-term vision is to build a standalone DMF unit for patient bedside testing—even in remote locations. Because the system is fully electronic, it could eventually be deployed in ambulances or remote units to deliver rapid diagnostics on the go.
Researchers are already exploring how DMF can transform:
Point-of-care diagnostics
Single-cell and ‘-omics’ research
Drug development and discovery
Synthetic biology
Environmental monitoring
One standout innovation is the use of DMF with lasers for single-cell extraction, enabling droplets smaller than a microliter and opening new frontiers in mass spectrometry and genomics.
Right now, DMF is still in its early adoption phase—mainly used by engineers, tinkerers, and specialized labs. But Blue Ocean wants to make it as commonplace as a pipette or petri dish. Their goal is to create easy-to-use systems that are reasonably priced for labs both small and large. In doing so, they aim to empower analytical chemists, biologists, and other researchers by offering integrated solutions for sample preparation and process automation—saving time, enhancing reproducibility, and improving the overall reliability of experimental outcomes.
Ultimately, Blue Ocean and Sci-bots hope to democratize advanced diagnostics and empower scientists around the world. They’re eager to collaborate, listen to the challenges researchers face, and offer solutions.
From prototyping to point-of-care, digital microfluidics offers a new way to think about fluid handling in the lab. It’s still early—but with thoughtful engineering and real-world partnerships, Blue Ocean is bringing this once-esoteric technology into sharp, practical focus.
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