Fabrication of microchambers and microchannels with biodegradable materials

The MEMS technology was used to fabricate two- and three-dimensional microchamber arrays, in which the chambers are interconnected with each other by microchannels, with PDMS to cultivate liver cells. This material is biocompatible and shows high gas permeability. However to realize artificial liver organ in vitro for implantation, this material is not useful because of its stability. It is therefore proposed in this paper, based on photolithography and the so-called soft-lithography techniques, to fabricate new types of microdevices with biodegradable materials, to be able in the near future to build a well-structured in vitro tissue ready for implantation. Two fabrication processes were investigated. The first one is a molding process and applied to commercially-available poly-(glycolic acid (GA)-DL-lactic acid) (pGALA), and the second one is a direct UV curing of the material through the desired pattern on a mask using photo-crosslinkable biodegradable macromonomer, poly-(?-caploracton (CL)-DL-lactic acid (LA)) tetraacrylate (pCLLA)-acrylate. Both fabrication processes are rapid and simple.