Capillary barriers provide a simple and elegant means for autonomous fluid-flow control in microfluidic systems. In this work, we report on the fabrication of periodic hydrogel microarrays in closed microfluidic systems using non-fluorescent capillary barriers. This design strategy enables the fabrication of picoliter-volume patterns of photopolymerized and thermo-gelling hydrogels without any defects and distortions.
This study reports a novel approach for separation of charged species using anion‐exchange hydrogel (AEH) and cation‐exchange hydrogel (CEH) in a microfluidic device. The capillary line pinning technique, which is applied in this study, enables in situ fabrication of alternating AEH and CEH that are placed in confined compartments. Adjacent enriched and depleted streams are obtained in continuous flow when a potential difference is applied over the hydrogel stack. The desalination performance of the microchip is demonstrated at different salt concentrations (0.01 × 10−3–1× 10−3m sodium chloride), potentials (10–100 V), current densities (12–28 A m−2), and liquid flow rates (0–5 µL min−1). It is shown that the microchip is able to remove ≈75% of the salt initially present in the depleted outlet streams at inlet stream concentrations of 1 × 10−3m sodium chloride. Besides desalination, the microchip allows study of ion transport in the ion‐selective hydrogels to elucidate the interplay of transport phenomena at the electrolyte–hydrogel interface during the desalination process.
We demonstrate an in vitro microfluidic cell culture platform that consists of periodic 3D hydrogel compartments with controllable shapes. The microchip is composed of approximately 500 discontinuous collagen gel compartments locally patterned in between PDMS pillars, separated by microfluidic channels. The typical volume of each compartment is 7.5 nanoliters. The compartmentalized design of the microchip and continuous fluid delivery enable long-term culturing of Caco-2 human intestine cells. We found that the cells started to spontaneously grow into 3D folds on day 3 of the culture. On day 8, Caco-2 cells were co-cultured for 36 hours under microfluidic perfusion with intestinal bacteria (E. coli) which did not overgrow in the system, and adhered to the Caco-2 cells without affecting cell viability. Continuous perfusion enabled the preliminary evaluation of drug effects by treating the co-culture of Caco-2 and E. coli with 34 µg ml−1 chloramphenicol during 36 hours, resulting in the death of the bacteria. Caco-2 cells were also cultured in different compartment geometries with large and small hydrogel interfaces, leading to differences in proliferation and cell spreading profile of Caco-2 cells. The presented approach of compartmentalized cell culture with facile microfluidic control can substantially increase the throughput of in vitro drug screening in the future.
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