Development of a microfluidic device for blood oxygenation by photocatalysis

Recent statistics provided by the American Lung Association assert that over 400,000 Americans die every year from lung disorders and more than 35 million are now living with symptoms of lung disease. Mortality rates of heart disease and certain cancers have declined in recent years partly due to improvements in diagnostic testing and the development of targeted medical technologies. Such improvements have not translated over to the treatment of lung disease and lung cancer. The goal of the artificial respiration project is to create a self-contained, mobile oxygen supply that is suitable for implantation and that can potentially replace acute or chronically disabled lungs. A novel microfluidic device for the oxygenation of whole blood has been developed. The device couples a semiconductor, titanium dioxide (TiO₂), thin film that generates oxygen through photocatalysis with a microfluidic network that facilitates diffusion of the dissolved oxygen to red blood cells. While true pulmonary respiration relies on passive diffusion of oxygen gas from the environment to the blood, the proposed device differs in that it generates oxygen directly from the water in blood plasma. This thesis focuses on the work done to fabricate and characterize the semiconductor photocatalyst, design the integrated microfluidic chip, and validate its capacity to oxygenate blood in real-time. Blood oxygenation experiments show that the microfluidic device exhibiting the best performance produced 4.06 mL of oxygen per 100 mL of blood, nearly two-thirds of the oxygen transferred in the lung.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Ullah, Tania

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Todd Thorsen and Richard Gilbert.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/50579

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/50579