The fluorescence-encoded microspheres were prepared by the simple and controllable microfluidic device for the first time The polycaprolactone (PCL) microspheres were encoded with different quantum dots (QDs) at various ratios and the fluorescence was decoded successfully The designed fluorescence encoding method was easily manipulated and generated the uniform microspheres with different size This research demonstrated a very facile and promising technique for fluorescence encoding over traditional methods (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved