title: Digitally tunable physicochemical coding of material composition and topography in continuous microfibres.
abstract: Heterotypic functional materials with compositional and topographical properties that vary spatiotemporally on the micro- or nanoscale are common in nature. However, fabricating such complex materials in the laboratory remains challenging. Here we describe a method to continuously create microfibres with tunable morphological, structural and chemical features using a microfluidic system consisting of a digital, programmable flow control that mimics the silk-spinning process of spiders. With this method we fabricated hydrogel microfibres coded with varying chemical composition and topography along the fibre, including gas micro-bubbles as well as nanoporous spindle-knots and joints that enabled directional water collection. We also explored the potential use of the coded microfibres for tissue engineering applications by creating multifunctional microfibres with a spatially controlled co-culture of encapsulated cells.
authors: Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Health Science, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
authors: Edward
authors: E
authors: Kang
authors: Gi Seok
authors: GS
authors: Jeong
authors: Yoon Young
authors: YY
authors: Choi
authors: Kwang Ho
authors: KH
authors: Lee
authors: Ali
authors: A
authors: Khademhosseini
authors: Sang-Hoon
authors: SH
authors: Lee
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D018920:Coculture Techniques; D044085:Microfluidics / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D047011:Silk / Q000737:chemistry*; D013112:Spiders; D023822:Tissue Engineering / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D047011:Silk