In this study, the hollow and highly flexible polydimethylsiloxane microneedles were fabricated in a one step and simple design. For this purpose, a commercial dermastamping device (Dermastamp® 140 DRS) was used as a mold to obtain highly flexible PDMS microneedles containing channels. With the proposed design, microneedles with a total height of 1500 μm, 1500 μm center-to-center spacing and 150 μm channel diameter was successfully fabricated. These data are all compatible with the dimensions and the geometry of the mold used. Then, a syringe adapter was fabricated with a 3D printer and combined with the hollow PDMS microneedle patch for the high-throughput production of alginate beads. After the adapter and the hollow PDMS microneedle patch combination was placed into the syringe pump, the mostly spherical alginate beads with a mean diameter of 2.0 ± 0.3 mm was produced. To sum up, the proposed design and fabrication scheme first offer a novel and simple strategy for the fabrication of hollow polymeric microneedles. Moreover, this system has the potential to be used not only for the high-throughput microfluidic fabrication of polymeric beads, but also in controlled drug delivery systems and cell encapsulation studies.
Primary Language | English |
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Subjects | Engineering |
Journal Section | Research Articles |
Authors | |
Publication Date | September 28, 2022 |
Submission Date | July 25, 2022 |
Published in Issue | Year 2022 Volume: 9 Issue: 3 |
Hittite Journal of Science and Engineering is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY NC).