Shanghai Jiaotong University and the National University of Singapore have successfully developed a controllable, transparent, biological

Since its inception, microfluidic chip technology has shown amazing application value in bioengineering, rapid medical treatment, chemical processes, micro-robots and wearable devices. In the past 20 years, with the advancement of science and technology, human beings have put forward more daring ideas and requirements for the development of microfluidic chips, such as precise control of complex microfluidics, chip simulation of human organs, flexible wearable chips and so on. However, the "traditional" microfluidic chip fabrication method based on ultra-clean room lithography has become one of the barriers to the development of microfluidic chip technology, which needs to be broken and innovative. Recently, the world's top magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) published online by Gong Xiaobo, associate professor of the School of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and visiting professor of Shanghai Jiaotong University, Lim Chwee Teck, professor of the National University of Singapore. Soft tubular microfluidics for 2D and 3D applications, PNAS 2017, published ahead of print September 18, 2017, doi:10.1073/pnas.1712195114). The research team successfully developed flexible microtubes with controllable, transparent and biocompatible outer diameter on the micrometer scale, and verified flexible microtubes as multi-dimensional cell separation chips and micron droplets on different scales from micrometer to meter. Feasibility of multiple cross-domain applications such as biocatalyticly driven robots, bio-triboelectric sensors, wearable sensors, and vascular biomimetic devices.

Flexible microtube

The inventor of flexible microtubules. From left to right: Dr. Wang Wang (National University of Singapore), Professor Chwee Teck Lim (National University of Singapore), Associate Professor Gong Xiaobo (Shanghai Jiaotong University) and Dr. Kong Fang (Singapore-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Research Center)

This work breaks through the complicated and expensive technical barriers of traditional microfluidic chips, which makes the microfluidic chip structure realize the expansion from planar 2D to 3D, laying a foundation for the development of multi-dimensional complex flexible microfluidic chip technology. Not only that, this technology innovation also provides a simple, cheap and efficient solution for building functional microfluidic chips for end users lacking ultra-clean photolithography technology, making microfluidic chip technology more suitable for various engineering projects. . The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11372191, 11232010), the National Natural Science Foundation of Singapore, and the Singapore-MIT Joint Research Center. At present, the flexible microtubule manufacturing technology has been jointly applied by the National University of Singapore, Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It has obtained international invention patents and entered the PCT phase (Patent Cooperation Treaty, referred to as PCT, mainly involving the submission, retrieval and examination of patent applications and A treaty that includes the cooperation and rationality of the dissemination of technical information). Based on this major technological breakthrough, the multi-dimensional cyclic tumor cell separation chip technology invention is being applied and operated by Shanghai Jiaotong University.