Microfluidics is an emerging science and technology that manipulates the fluids in channels of tens of micrometers. It provides better solutions in fields of chemistry, material science and biology. Its versatile applications involve chemical synthesis, separation and analysis, high-throughput drug screening, bioanalysis, cell biology and tissue engineering, etc. However, it still requires a great deal of work to be done in its manufacturing and downstream applications to make it widely and inexpensively available. This PhD thesis focuses on fabrication of microfluidic devices and biomaterial design for biological applications through conducting three independent projects.

Herein, I start from a brief introduction of microfluidics including the fabrication of PDMS-based microfl...[ Read more ]

Microfluidics is an emerging science and technology that manipulates the fluids in channels of tens of micrometers. It provides better solutions in fields of chemistry, material science and biology. Its versatile applications involve chemical synthesis, separation and analysis, high-throughput drug screening, bioanalysis, cell biology and tissue engineering, etc. However, it still requires a great deal of work to be done in its manufacturing and downstream applications to make it widely and inexpensively available. This PhD thesis focuses on fabrication of microfluidic devices and biomaterial design for biological applications through conducting three independent projects.

Herein, I start from a brief introduction of microfluidics including the fabrication of PDMS-based microfluidics devices and several representative applications. After that, I present the research projects during my PhD study: (1) Microneedle arrays using microlens-based UV lithography, and microneedle arrays are applicable for applications in drug delivery; (2) Microfluidic method for on-demand fluid dispensing using a microcreviced membrane, and this fluid dispensing method is readily to be applied in chemical and biological analysis; (3) Self-crosslinkable chitosan hydrogel for in situ cell encapsulation and subsequent 3D cell culture, which is a promising extracellular matrix (ECM) candidate in the field of tissue engineering. Each project is related to biological applications.