Rapid Fabrication of Bio‐inspired 3D Microfluidic Vascular Networks

Abstract

A new method to embed branched 3D microvascular fluidic networks inside plastic substrates by harnessing electrostatic discharge phenomena is introduced. This nearly instantaneous process reproducibly generates highly branched tree-like microchannel architectures that bear remarkable similarity to naturally occurring vasculature. This method can be applied to a variety of polymers, and may help enable production of organ-sized tissue scaffolds containing embedded vasculature.