Oviduct-mimetic chip to improve in vitro fertilization for oligozoospermia

This research reports a microfluidic system for imitating the oviduct of mammals with a microfluidic channels to achieve in vitro fertilization (IVF) of imprinting control region (ICR) mouse. We applied a method to manipulate the oocyte and sperm in our microfluidic channel by the positive dielectrophoretic (p-DEP) force. In this study, p-DEP response of the oocyte and sperm were exhibited under applied bias conditions with AC 10 V_pp waveform at 1 MHz for 10 minutes. By using this method, the sperm concentration of the vicinity of the oocyte could be acutely increased and enhance the probability of natural fertilization. We also used numerical software (CFDRC-ACE⁺) to stimulate the square of electric field and analyze the location where the oocyte and sperm will be trapped. The microfluidic devices were designed and fabricated using poly (dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) to maintain the biocompatibility. In this paper, we proposed the imitation oviduct microfluidic chip to enhance in vitro fertilization rate for oligozoospermia. The results indicated a p-DEP served to drive the position of the oocyte and sperm. Average fertilization rate is about 51.58 % in our micro-channel structures at the insemination concentration (1.5 × 10⁶ sperm mL^-1).