Buckling-Based Method for Evaluating Young's Modulus of Microfiber and Predicting Cell Growth

Variety of microfibers have been widely utilized as a promising bioink for 3D bioprinting. However, the mechanical properties of the cell-laden microfiber are difficult to be characterized precisely due to the lack of low-damage loading methods for encapsulated cells that require a relatively short loading time. In this paper, we propose a bulking-based method for rapidly evaluating the Young's modulus, E
c
of the microfibers within several seconds. A two-probe based micromanipulation system is utilized to compress the microfiber. Based on the computer vision, the compression force is measured and used for calculating the E
c
according to the Euler column formula, and it is found that the evaluation results of E
c
can be improved in a high compression speed. Moreover, the precision of measure E
c
is guaranteed and the value is close to the other loading methods. The results show the proposed method can realize a high precise measurement in about 2s which is faster than other methods. Additionally, the measured E
c
is used to predict the cell growth of cell-laden microfibers in the next few days, demonstrating its potential for speeding up the screening of biocompatible materials.