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TY - THES AU - Mork, Matthias TI - Microfluidic fabrication of tailored microgels for tissue engineering applications PB - Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen VL - Dissertation CY - Aachen M1 - RWTH-2026-00404 SP - 189 Seiten : Illustrationen PY - 2025 N1 - Dissertation, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen, 2025 AB - Tissue engineering has emerged as a relevant scientific field that is capable of improving the quality of human life of current and future generations by selectively targeting and providing insights into current medical or biomedical challenges. One particular challenge is to develop platforms that are able to better understand, regenerate, and replace human tissues. In this aspect, microgels are promising materials, featuring various attractive properties. Droplet-based microfluidics presents a promising continuous production method for fabricating microgels featuring desired properties and characteristics for biomedical or tissue engineering applications. In this thesis, the development of different microfluidic platforms and their implementation is demonstrated, aiming at fabricating a variety of microgels that can solve different tasks in tissue engineering applications. Conceptually, the efforts were directed towards different aspects regarding the microfluidic production and application of the produced materials, which include: production scalability of spherical and rod-shaped microgels, introducing functionality into microgels with special attention on forming three-dimensional (3D) microgel-cell constructs, and developing a platform for locally releasing specific biomolecules directly from microgels. The development of parallelized step emulsification microfluidic devices for producing spherical microgels is addressed. Moreover, the development of a microfluidic platform that combines step emulsification with droplet confinement and crosslinking in parallelized microchannels for fabricating rod-shaped microgels in parallel is presented. Further, it is outlined how the produced microgels can be implemented as substrates in generating 3D cell-material assemblies, with special focus on achieving a platform to reproducibly create 3D induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) microgel constructs in sizes ranging from the micro- to millimeter scale, based on spherical polyethylene glycol (PEG)-based microgels. In addition to providing substrates, droplet microfluidics can give rise to microcapsules, capable of encapsulating and releasing biomolecules. A platform was developed to generate porous PEG-based microcapsules from double emulsion droplets, featuring different pore sizes, creating promising carriers for a diffusion-based delivery of biomolecules, provided that the release properties are system specifically tuned. LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)11 UR - https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/1024915 ER -