Droplet manipulation has found broad applications in various engineering and biomedical fields, such as biochemistry, microfluidic systems, drug delivery, and tissue engineering. Many methods have been developed to enhance the ability for manipulating droplets, among which magnetically actuated droplet manipulation has attracted widespread interests due to its remote, noninvasive manipulation ability and biocompatibility. This review summarizes the approaches and their principles that enable actuating the droplet magnetically. The potential biomedical applications of such a technique in bioassay, cell assembly, and tissue engineering are given.
Keywords: biomedicine; droplet manipulation; ferrofluid; liquid marble; magnetic nanoparticles.