Microfluidic spinning of micro- and nano-scale fibers for tissue engineering

Abstract

Microfluidic technologies have recently been shown to hold significant potential as novel tools for producing micro- and nano-scale structures for a variety of applications in tissue engineering and cell biology. Over the last decade, microfluidic spinning has emerged as an advanced method for fabricating fibers with diverse shapes and sizes without the use of complicated devices or facilities. In this critical review, we describe the current development of microfluidic-based spinning techniques for producing micro- and nano-scale fibers based on different solidification methods, platforms, geometries, or biomaterials. We also highlight the emerging applications of fibers as bottom-up scaffolds such as cell encapsulation or guidance for use in tissue engineering research and clinical practice.

Microfluidic Fabrication of Bio-Inspired Microfibers with Controllable Magnetic Spindle-Knots for 3D Assembly and Water Collection

“…[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] Typically, microfibers with separated spindleknots can be achieved by dip-coating of commercial microfibers into polymer solutions. 1,20,38 Thus, polymer solution drops can form along the microfiber due to the Rayleigh instability, and then spindle-knots are generated after evaporating the solvent of the polymer solution drops.…”

Microfluidic Fabrication Solutions for Tailor-Designed Fiber Suspensions

“…Recent efforts to build lab-on-a-chip applications has created increasing interest in microscopic systems containing fiber-like particles, for example for biomedical applications, drug delivery or micro-filtration devices [3,4]. In this case, the precise understanding of the fiber flow interactions is a necessary ingredient for the development of efficient devices.…”

Rapid prototyping of microchannels with surface patterns for fabrication of polymer fibers

“…Recently, researchers have been exploring the possible uses of microfluidics in biomedical diagnostics [9][10][11][12][13][14][15] and biocompatible polymer microfiber fabrication [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. Microfluidic diagnostic devices show a lot of promise as they have high portability, reduced analysis time, and inexpensive production compared to benchtop instruments.…”

“…Polymer microfibers can be made by a microfluidic focusing approach, which allows control over the shape and size of the fibers [18,19]. These fibers show promise as substrates for drug delivery [16,19], cell growth [17,19,22], and tissue engineering [19,20]. The high cost and slow production of the popular silicon wafer template for creating microchannels, however, is limiting the expansion of this field.…”

“…Microfluidic focusing, on the other hand, caters to very mild reaction conditions. This approach is also flexible across various geometries and materials [19,20]. Various shapes of fibers have been reported [16,19,20] with fiber diameters ranging from nanometer scale to several hundred microns [20].…”