A LiNbO3 substrate surface acoustic wave microfluidic chip for patterning of cardiomyocytes

Cardiovascular diseases continue to threaten human life, health and safety. Among various treatment methods, myocardial tissue engineering is one of the important methods to solve the problem of cardiovascular disease. The main goal of myocardial tissue engineering is to make the synthetic or repaired myocardium have its original physiological function, and the pattering of myocardium cells into a regular directional arrangement is one of the most challenging techniques. Therefore, in this study, a surface acoustic wave microfluidic chip with LiNbO3 as the piezoelectric substrate was designed to meet the needs of patterned arrangement of cardiomyocytes. Firstly, this study introduces the preparation method of the microfluidic chip based on LiNbO3. The microfluidic chip is used to carry out the patterning simulation experiment of cardiomyocytes, and it is verified that the surface acoustic wave can make the silica particles oriented in the flow channel. The micro-channel is used to simulate the growth environment of cardiomyocytes. Secondly, by analyzing the experimental results, it is concluded that the surface acoustic wave microfluidic chip designed in this study possesses patterned particles, demonstrating its application potential in repairing the damaged surface of myocardial tissue. Finally, a surface acoustic wave microfluidic chip based on LiNbO3 was used to arrange cardiomyocytes in the hydrogel. Scanning the solidified myocardial fibers, it is concluded that the directional arrangement of the internal myocardial cells of the myocardial fibers obtained from the experiment is consistent with the theory. Demonstrated the huge application potential of LiNbO3 substrate surface acoustic wave microfluidic chip for cardiomyocyte patterning in myocardial tissue engineering.