Fabrication of a microchannel using chain-shaped alginate hydrogel fibers as sacrificial structure

In this research, we proposed a method to fabricate a PDMS chain-shaped microchannel by using a chain-shaped alginate hydrogel fiber as sacrificial structure. Embedding and dissolving a chain-shaped alginate hydrogel fiber in a PDMS structure, we succeeded in formation of a chain-shaped microchannel. When we infused 2 different colors of ink into this microchannel from 2 inlets, we achieved the control of flow regimes between laminar and vibrated flows according to their flow rates. Therefore, we believe that the chain-shaped alginate hydrogel fiber will be a useful tool for a simple and low-cost preparation of PDMS microchannels with complex shapes.