Polymeric nanofiber web-based artificial renal microfluidic chip

Abstract

In this paper, we present a new method for the creation of a smaller dialyzer and do so by incorporating polymeric nanofiber web, which is known to have good filtration efficiency for broad particle sizes, into a poly (dimethylsiloxane)-based microplatform. We have developed a process that makes possible the efficient production of polyethersulfone and polyurethane nanofiber web and that, itself, incorporates an electrospinning method. We have combined the nanofiber web with the PDMS-based microfluidic platform to create a chip-based portable hemodialysis system. With the dialyzing chip, we evaluated the filtration capability of molecules in broad ranges of sizes and compared the filtration capability of nanofiber membranes with that of PES and polyvinylidene fluoride porous membranes (sheet type): we discovered that the nanofiber membranes have better filtration performance than the other membranes. Blood cells were not mechanically affected during their filtration and their transportation through the chip. In conclusion, we have demonstrated the feasibility of chip-based hemodialysis, and we expect that our method suggested in this paper will be applied to the development of small light-weight dialyzers for the realization of portable hemodialysis systems.