Fluidic Assembly of Multilayered Tubular Microstructures inside 2-layered Microfluidic Devices

Microfluidic devices provide efficient approaches for building bio-mimetic tubular structures for in vitro tissue models. In this paper, we report a novel method of constructing multilayered tubular structures embedding cells via a 2-layer microfluidic device. The on-chip fabrication of movable microstructures embedding fibroblasts (NIH/3T3) based on Poly (ethylene glycol) Diacrylate (PEGDA) was reported. A novel 2-layered microfluidic device was fabricated by Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), for conducting the fluidic self-assembly of the movable microstructures. The self-assembly process via this device was demonstrated. For improving the assembly results, a funneled structure was added in the microfluidic device. The improved self-assembly result of constructing multilayered tubular microstructures with high efficiency was demonstrated.