A microfluidic device that simultaneously applies the conditions required for microelectroporation and microsonoporation in a flow-through scheme toward high-efficiency and high-throughput molecular delivery into mammalian cells is presented. This multi-modal poration microdevice using simultaneous application of electric field and ultrasonic wave was realized by a three-dimensional (3D) microelectrode scheme where the electrodes function as both electroporation electrodes and cell flow channel so that acoustic wave can be applied perpendicular to the electric field simultaneously to cells flowing through the microfluidic channel. This 3D microelectrode configuration also allows a uniform electric field to be applied while making the device compatible with fluorescent microscopy. It is hypothesized that the simultaneous application of two different fields (electric field and acoustic wave) in perpendicular directions allows formation of transient pores along two axes of the cell membrane at reduced poration intensities, hence maximizing the delivery efficiency while minimizing cell death. The microfluidic electro-sonoporation system was characterized by delivering small molecules into mammalian cells, and showed average poration efficiency of 95.6% and cell viability of 97.3%. This proof of concept result shows that by combining electroporation and sonoporation together, significant improvement in molecule delivery efficiency could be achieved while maintaining high cell viability compared to electroporation or sonoporation alone. The microfluidic electro-sonoporation device presented here is, to the best of our knowledge, the first multi-modal cell poration device using simultaneous application of electric field and ultrasonic wave. This new multi-modal cell poration strategy and system is expected to have broad applications in delivery of small molecule therapeutics and ultimately in large molecule delivery such as gene transfection applications where high delivery efficiency and high viability are crucial.
A novel laser micromachining method is presented that utilizes a microfabricated silicon stencil and a CO 2 laser for low-cost high-resolution machining of polymer substrates. With this laser stenciling method, arrays of microchannels and microholes were patterned in poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) and Kapton R films. Minimum recorded feature sizes patterned in these films were 8.4 and 12.6 μm, respectively, using a stencil opening of 25 μm. Different stencil sidewall configurations were investigated to determine the effect of such topographies on the resulting polymer patterns. An example multi-layer microfluidic device, comprised of PDMS layers with stenciled features, is presented to demonstrate the direct, single-step polymer microfluidic channel fabrication capability of this technique. The method presented here is suitable for low-cost and medium-volume rapid polymer microdevice production while overcoming the low-resolution limit of CO 2 laser micromachining.
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