Microfluidics developed rapidly in recent years and is nowadays a versatile tool in research labs to fabricate and, maybe more importantly, analyze bio-chemical materials, bearing the potential for increased industrial and medical applications. Some of the difficulties inherent in continuous microfluidics, like the axial dispersion, led to the development of droplet-based microfluidics, which allows to allocate a certain amount of liquid or cells into individual (typically surfactant stabilized) emulsion droplets and handle them with superior control. However, the interesting is not always inside a droplet but might be as well located right at its interface.

We will give a brief overview to microfluidics and its applications starting from continuous microfluidics to droplet based microfluidics and will dwell on a more recent concept called “droplet interface bilayer”. When using e.g. (phospho-) lipids as surfactants to stabilize emulsion droplets, a solvent-free bilayer is formed within seconds after contacting two of those stabilized droplet interphases. This offers the possibility in droplet based microfluidics to produce, study and manipulate unsupported lipid bilayer, which can be considered as artificial cell membranes.