A droplet-based, composite PDMS/glass capillary microfluidic system for evaluating protein crystallization conditions by microbatch and vapor-diffusion methods with on-chip X-ray diffraction

On-chip protein crystallization and diffraction: Proteins can be crystallized in nanoliter volumes by using both microbatch and vapor-diffusion techniques inside composite PDMS/glass microfluidic devices (PDMS = polydimethylsiloxane). The quality of crystals can be assessed directly by on-chip X-ray diffraction (see picture).