Chaotic vessels fabricated by fractal gelatin

Author

Lung-Jieh Yang ; Tsung-Sheng Sheu ; Bo-Hong Chen ; Chia-Chan Lee

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. & Electromech. Eng., Tamkang Univ., Tamsui, Taiwan

Volume

7

Issue

8

fYear

2012

fDate

8/1/2012 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

705

Lastpage

708

Abstract

A novel gelatin patterning technique applied to making capillary vessels with fractal dendrite configuration is presented. Such a chaotic tree-like pattern has been obtained by precipitating among the gelatin matrix that is spin coated on a glass substrate at room temperature. The weight percentage of the original gelatin solution is over saturated. As the temperature decreases, the gelatin crystallises and forms a natural fractal pattern extruding the film surface. The process conditions of spin coating and the gelatine concentration are varied so that the hydraulic diameters of the fractal branches are verified from 0.1 to 23 μm. The authors therefore fabricated hollow vessels by the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) de-moulding of the soft lithography. The water filling test of the PDMS vessel chip is done accordingly. The issue of the toxicity is also addressed.

Keywords

biomedical materials; blood vessels; capillarity; chaos; crystallisation; dendritic structure; fractals; gelatin; pattern formation; polymers; precipitation; prosthetics; soft lithography; spin coating; toxicology; PDMS vessel chip; capillary vessels; chaotic tree-like pattern; chaotic vessel fabrication; crystallisation; fractal dendrite configuration; fractal gelatin; gelatin matrix; gelatin patterning technique; glass substrate; hollow vessels; hydraulic diameters; natural fractal pattern; polydimethylsiloxane demoulding; precipitation; size 0.1 mum to 23 mum; soft lithography; spin coating; temperature; toxicity; water filling test;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Micro & Nano Letters, IET

Publisher

iet

ISSN

1750-0443

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/mnl.2012.0189

Filename

6294586