An agar-microchamber cell-cultivation system: flexible change of microchamber shapes during cultivation by photo-thermal etching

A new type of cell-cultivation system based on photo-thermal etching has been developed for the on-chip cultivation of living cells using an agarose microchamber array. The method can be used to flexibly change the chamber structure by photo thermal etching, even during the cultivation of cells, depending upon the progress in cell growth. We used an infrared (1064 nm) focused laser beam as a heat source to melt and remove agar gel at the heated spot on a thin chromium layer. The melting of the agar occurred just near the chromium thin layer, and the size of the photo thermally etched area depended almost linearly on the power of the irradiated laser beam from 2 m m to 50 m m. Thus by using photo-thermal etching with adequate laser power we could easily fabricate narrow tunnel-shaped channels between the microchambers at the bottom of the agar-layer even during cell cultivation. After 48 h of cultivation of nerve cells, the nerve cells in two adjacent chambers made fiber connections through the fabricated narrow tunnel-shaped channels. These results suggest that photo-thermal etching occurred only in the area where an absorbing material was used, which means that it is possible to photo-thermally etch lines without damaging the cells in the microchambers. The results also suggest that the agar-microchamber cell cultivation system in combination with photo-thermal etching can potentially be used for the next stage of single cell cultivation including the real-time control of the interaction of cells during cell cultivation.