  We present a technique to locally and rapidly heat water drops in
microfluidic devices with microwave dielectric heating. Water absorbs microwave
power more efficiently than polymers, glass, and oils due to its permanent
molecular dipole moment that has a large dielectric loss at GHz frequencies.
The relevant heat capacity of the system is a single thermally isolated
picoliter drop of water and this enables very fast thermal cycling. We
demonstrate microwave dielectric heating in a microfluidic device that
integrates a flow-focusing drop maker, drop splitters, and metal electrodes to
locally deliver microwave power from an inexpensive, commercially available 3.0
GHz source and amplifier. The temperature of the drops is measured by observing
the temperature dependent fluorescence intensity of cadmium selenide
nanocrystals suspended in the water drops. We demonstrate characteristic
heating times as short as 15 ms to steady-state temperatures as large as 30
degrees C above the base temperature of the microfluidic device. Many common
biological and chemical applications require rapid and local control of
temperature, such as PCR amplification of DNA, and can benefit from this new
technique.

Biological Physics;Soft Condensed Matter