Rapid Fabrication of Bio-inspired 3D Microfluidic Vascular Networks

A new method to embed branched 3D microvascular fluidic networks inside plastic substrates by harnessing electrostatic discharge phenomena is introduced. This nearly instantaneous process reproducibly generates highly branched treelike microchannel architectures that bear remarkable similarity to naturally occurring vasculature. This method can be applied to a variety of polymers, and may help enable production of organ-sized tissue scaffolds containing embedded vasculature.