Organ-on-a-Chip Fabrication Using Dynamic Photomask

Organ-on-a-chip (OoC) technology is a powerful tool for creating physiologically relevant microscale models applicable to biomedical studies. Despite the advances in OoC technology, its fabrication method still primarily relies on soft lithography, which has a long design-to-prototype cycle that creates a bottleneck in the acceleration of OoC innovation. To increase the agility of the OoC fabrication process, a system is developed to fabricate OoC using a digital photomask aligned with a microchamber. The approach uses a pre-defined microfluidic chamber customized by xurography and microfluidic channels photopatterned by a digital photomask. The versatility of the approach offered previously unattainable features in the fabrication of OoC, including non-reticular height profiles of the OoC architecture, and real-time modification of channel designs to trap suspension culture (e.g., spheroids). In summary, this work highlights a versatile system to fabricate OoC by direct photopatterning that can accommodate various OoC design requirements of microenvironments of specific organ tissues. It is anticipated that the system can facilitate the rapid fabrication of OoC, potentially supporting advancements in OoC design innovation, which can potentially increase the adoption of the OoC technology for therapeutic screening and elucidation of disease mechanisms in the scientific community.