Microchips killed the radio star

Scientists from the US have adapted standard equipment used for making vinyl records to assemble cell networks and produce microfluidic structures.

The ability to engineer microscale structures with varying heights is very helpful for biomedical research and critical for many miniaturisation fields. Soft lithography, which combines photolithography and polymer moulding, is widely used and simple, but is hampered by the need for toxic photoresist materials and clean rooms.

Emilia Entcheva and Harold Bien at Stony Brook University, New York, have developed what they call ’acoustic micromachining’, a non-photolithographic technique which uses equipment normally used to mass produce vinyl records.

The approach employs an audio signal to encode the desired spatial pattern, and allows smooth depth variations in the machined channels, which may prove helpful for biomedical problems and is not possible with photolithography.

Entcheva and Bien have used acoustic micromachining to produce microfluidic structures and wavy polymer fibres, and to assemble networks of cells on 3D scaffolds. They propose that the method will be widely applicable in biomedical research.

Rowena Milan