3D skin microfluidic phantom for in vitro wearable testing

Abstract

A standardized and cost-effective perspiration phantom for in vitro testing is needed to replace the variable and resource consuming human tests at research level. Here, an alternative to the existing devices, which mainly are made of laser-perforated thin membranes, is presented using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and soft lithography. The proposed method overcomes the fabrication challenges of replicating the eccrine sweat gland structure. Sweat glands conduits are faithfully defined in-plane and the skin interface is created by bonding multiple PDMS layers. Parameters such as sweat duct diameter, sweat gland density and wettability properties were successfully replicated