Sodium alginate film production using microfluidic system for tissue engineering applications

In recent years, notable advances in tissue engineering have required the development of new methods for the production of scaffolds that support tissue-specific cell culture organizations. Inadequate control of conventional production methods over scaffold microarchitecture has increased the requirement for the development of new techniques to produce of scaffolds. Microfluidic techniques have recently become one of the most interesting new techniques for the production of highly ordered and controlled porous film scaffolds structures. In this thesis, porous alginate films that can be used as scaffold structures in tissue engineering applications are produced with a T-junction microfluidic device. Used in the present work; in this study the two step process to the potential of porous film formation from microbubbles that produced by the microfluidic device was investigated. In the first, microbubbles of different polymeric concentrations were collected on a plate and, the formation of porous structures was achieved by bubble bursting process. In the second step, a gelling process applied on the microbubbles obtained with a use of CaCl2 solution and freeze-drying to form porous three-dimensional structures. In addition, the effects of parameters such as polymeric solution concentrations, liquid flow rate and gas pressure on the properties of the obtained films were investigated. The microstructures of the produced films were examined by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The chemical composition of the hydrogel films was determined by Fourier Transformation Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) and X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD). Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) was used to examine the thermal properties. In addition, the swelling test was used to determine the water uptake capacity of the hydrogel films, and the Neutral Red Intake (NKA) cytotoxicity test was used to evaluate the biocompatibility. The obtained results showed that microfluidic system is an effective method in controlled production of porous scaffold structures in tissue engineering.