Microfluidic Generation of Multicomponent Soft Biomaterials

Abstract

Soft biomaterials hold great potential for a plethora of biomedical applications because of their deformability, biodegradability, biocompatibility, high bioactivity, and low antigenicity. Multicomponent soft biomaterials are particularly attractive as a way of accommodating components made of different materials and generating combinative functions. Microfluidic technology has emerged as an outstanding tool in generating multicomponent materials with elaborate structures and constituents, in that it can manipulate multiphasic flows precisely on the micron scale. In recent decades, much progress has been achieved in the microfluidic fabrication of multicomponent soft biomaterials with finely defined physicochemical properties capable of controllable therapeutics delivery, three-dimensional (3D) cell culture, flexible devices and wearable electronics, and biosensing for molecules. In the paper, we summarize current progress in multicomponent soft biomaterials derived from microfluidics and emphasize their applications in biomedical fields. We also provide an outlook of the remaining challenges and future trends in this field.

Keywords

• Soft biomaterial
• Microfluidics
• Multicomponent
• Microparticle
• Microfiber