Microfluidic spinning of grooved microfiber for guided neuronal cell culture using surface tension mediated grooved round channel

Microfibers with groove structure enable the guided culture of diverse cells. For the fabrication of grooved microfibers, microchannel with a few microscale groove structure needs to be fabricated using complicated photolithography processes. In this study, a novel method to fabricate a round channel embedded microfluidic device for generating continuous grooved microfibers is introduced. The surface tension of PDMS prepolymer was used to construct the round channels and groove patterned structures in the microfluidic device. The self-organized multidroplet structures were utilized to engrave the groove on the microfiber without any complex procedure. Using the device, the groove patterned (ca.10 μm of pattern size) microfiber was successfully fabricated. Microfibers were continuously produced without clogging and the diameters of the grooved microfibers were varied with the flow rate. For the test of usability for cell alignment, fibers were coated with laminin and the neuro-progenitor cells from prenatal rat were seeded on the prepared grooved fibers and cultured. The guided growth of neuronal cells on the fiber was observed through the immunostaining with neurofilament.