Abstract
In this study, we developed a modular micronozzle system that can control the flow of fluid based on centrifugal force and synthesize functional alginate microspheres with various structures and sizes. Our method is to fabricate a programmable microreactor that can be easily manufactured without the conventional soft-lithography process using various sequences of the micronozzles with various inner diameters. To overcome the obstacles of pump-based microfluidic devices that need to be precisely controlled, we designed the programmable microreactor to be driven under centrifugal force with a combination of micronozzles, thus enabling the mass production of various functional alginate microspheres within a few minutes. The programmable microreactor designed through the arrangement of the modular micronozzles enables the formation of various types of alginate microspheres such as core-shell, Janus, and particle mixture. These materials are controlled to a size from 400 µm to 900 µm. In addition, our platform is used to generate pH-responsive smart materials, and to easily control various sizes, shapes, and compositions simultaneously. By evaluating the release process of model drugs according to the pH change, the possibility of drug delivery application is confirmed. We believe that our method can contribute to development of biomaterials engineering that has been limited by the requirement of sophisticated devices, and special skills and/or labor.
Highlights
A clear gap exists between the current microfluidic technologies that can meet the recent materials trends, despite the considerable effort expended to realize the creation of new functionalities with highly controlled physicochemical parameters such as size, shape, composition, and surface property for the extension of specified applications using custom-built microfluidic reactors[13,14]
To overcome the limitation of the conventional pump-based microreactor, which requires careful fluid control, a user friendly microreactor was implemented by inducing fluid flow using centrifugal force (Table S1)
We presented a novel approach to a centrifugal-force driven modular micronozzle system, and its simple operation for the generation of complex engineering microspheres
Summary
A clear gap exists between the current microfluidic technologies that can meet the recent materials trends, despite the considerable effort expended to realize the creation of new functionalities with highly controlled physicochemical parameters such as size, shape, composition, and surface property for the extension of specified applications using custom-built microfluidic reactors[13,14] This could be due to the high costs associated with microfluidics, and the requirement for well-trained skillful labor[15,16,17]. Depending on the shape and size of the engineered alginate microsphere, our programmable micro-reactor is customized by different combinations of microcentrifuge tube, microneedle, and conical tube, which are generally found in the laboratory This system was operated within a few minutes by centrifugation-induced gravitational force. We envision that this universal strategy may serve as an on-demand platform for a wide range of real applications, especially for the development of advanced smart materials in biomedical engineering with new functionalities
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