Membrane fouling

Abstract

Organ on a Chip (OoC) systems are of high interest through its use for medicine testing in a small time scale without the need for animal testing. Membranes used in OoCs form a base to grow cells on and need to be suitable for cell-attachment and porous. Fouling is the 'Achilles heel' in membrane performance. Research shows that as a result of fouling the viability of the skin cells grown in the chip decreased to zero after 3 weeks. If research on organs is to extend and research on cell- or tissue growth will include longer time spans, the influence of membrane fouling with conditions similar to the OoC is an important factor to understand.
In this research a microfluidic flow cell is produced and used to explore fouling within the OoC. Static and dynamic fouling experiments are executed on membranes having pore sizes ranging from 0.4 to 5 μm.
Scanning electron microscope (SEM) images indicate that standard blocking and cake layer formation are dominating fouling mechanisms.
Membranes with 1 μm pore size are the most susceptible to standard blocking. Further a decrease in pore area of 0%, 11% and 20% and a decrease in uncovered amount of pores of 27%, 34% and 80% for Glycine, BSA and λ-DNA respectively are measured after one week of fouling.
Cake layer formation is seen after fouling for a shorter duration for BSA (one day) than for Glycine (one hour) and a higher concentration of BSA particles is permitted through all tested membranes than Glycine, therefore the conclusion is drawn that BSA causes less fouling than Glycine.