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However, at the conclusion of most experiments, the emulsions must be broken to recover and analyze their contents. This is usually achieved with demulsifiers, like perfluorooctanol and chloroform, which can interfere with downstream reactions and harm cells. Here, we describe a simple approach to rapidly and efficiently break microfluidic emulsions, which requires no chemicals. Our method allows one-pot multi-step reactions, making it useful for large scale automated processing of reactions requiring demulsification. Using a hand-held antistatic gun, we pulse emulsions with the electric field, coalescing \u223c100\u2009\u03bcl of droplets in \u223c10\u2009s. We show that while emulsions broken with chemical demulsifiers exhibit potent PCR inhibition, the antistatic-broken emulsions amplify efficiently. The ability to break emulsions quickly without chemicals should make our approach valuable for most demulsification needs in microfluidics.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1063\/1.4995479","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,7,20]],"date-time":"2017-07-20T12:32:45Z","timestamp":1500553965000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1063\/aip-crossmark-policy-page","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":51,"title":["Rapid, chemical-free breaking of microfluidic emulsions with a hand-held antistatic gun"],"prefix":"10.1063","volume":"11","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7341-5528","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mohsen","family":"Karbaschi","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, University of California 1 , San Francisco, California 94158, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Payam","family":"Shahi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, University of California 1 , San Francisco, California 94158, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Adam R.","family":"Abate","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, University of California 1 , San Francisco, California 94158, USA"},{"name":"Chan Zuckerberg Biohub 2 , 499 Illinois St., San Francisco, California 94158, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"317","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,7,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"2023062409455351500_c1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"2146","DOI":"10.1039\/c2lc21147e","volume":"12","year":"2012","journal-title":"Lab Chip"},{"key":"2023062409455351500_c2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"977","DOI":"10.1103\/RevModPhys.77.977","volume":"77","year":"2005","journal-title":"Rev. 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