Flexible microfluidic fabrication of oil-encapsulated alginate microfibers

Abstract

A unified microfluidic approach is presented for flexible fabrication of oil-encapsulated calcium alginate microfibers. The oil encapsulate phase was directly injected into the gelling alginate fiber, thus allowing the adjustable tuning of the encapsulate geometry ranging from spherical to prolate ellipsoid, plug-like and tubular shapes. Phase maps were developed that show the conditions required to achieve desired fiber morphologies with intended encapsulate phase ratio. We also show for very first time how oil encapsulates can be selectively grouped across the microfibers. A force-balance model, validated against a non-gelling system, was introduced to predict the size of spherical encapsulates.

Engineering of Hydrogel Materials with Perfusable Microchannels for Building Vascularized Tissues

“…Fiber‐shaped materials can be produced by solidifying the microflows. Gas, oil, water droplets or cell spheroids can be combined into flows to generate microfiber‐based materials with enriched functions and expanded applications in multiple fields.…”

Transformable bubble-filled alginate microfibersviavertical microfluidics

“…While several investigations have been carried out to form a variety of oil-filled [11][12][13][14] or waterfilled 15,16 microfibers, reports on the formation of highly structured gas-filled fibers are scarce.…”

“…We also recently reported how the presence of oil encapsulates within microfibers produced in a vertical microfluidic setup can render particular morphology or functions to the fibers. 13,14 In this work, we extend our research on vertical microfluidics to air encapsulates, which can hugely increase the buoyancy force acting on microfibers during their formation. The verticalorientation of the coaxial glass capillaries allowed the fibers to elongate during their formation, under the influence of buoyancy, and produced morphologies not easily achievable by any other horizontal microfluidic setup.…”

Experimental and numerical study on a novel microfluidic method to fabricate curcumin loaded calcium alginate microfibres

“…Nowadays, the amount of research in the fields of microfluidics and lab‐on‐chip (LOC) has increased dramatically because of their abundant advantages . These advantages include less consumption of materials, fewer toxic effects on the environment based on a lower need for large amounts of chemicals, promising in vitro results regarding the perfect resemblance of in vivo environments, and less cost .…”

“…N owadays, the amount of research in the fields of microfluidics and lab-on-chip (LOC) has increased dramatically because of their abundant advantages. [1][2][3] These advantages include less consumption of materials, fewer toxic effects on the environment based on a lower need for large amounts of chemicals, promising in vitro results regarding the perfect resemblance of in vivo environments, and less cost. [4][5][6] During the last decade, microfluidic devices perform a prominent role in several studies, for instance, the separation of proteins or pollutants, [7,8] single cell studies, [9,10] the synthesis of organic compounds, [11] the production of drug loaded carriers in different shapes for nano/micro scale, [12][13][14] fabrication of cell culture scaffolds, [15,16] and cancer-therapy.…”