Experimental investigation on a hybrid manufacturing process of micro-scale mold for biomimetic intestinal villi’s scaffold

In this paper, a new hybrid manufacturing process was proposed to fabricate biomimetic intestinal villi. The hybrid process consists of two steps, i.e., a micro-drilling process to make steep holes and a laser-based machining process to smoothen their geometries. Polycarbonate (PC) was used as a candidate material for mold, and villi’s scaffold was fabricated using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). For the hybrid manufacturing process, conditions of the micro-drilling process were optimized first and then a series of laser-based machining experiments were performed using the pre-produced micro-drilled molds. A full factorial design of experiments was conducted to investigate the effects of laser power, air, and the objective lens, and the shape of villi was observed as an output to evaluate the process performance. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed hybrid manufacturing process is able to fabricate villi whose geometry is consistent and suitable for cell culturing. Consequently, villi scaffold with various dimensions could be conveniently built using different parameters, and it could be applied to personalized organ-on-a-chip applications in the future.