microfluidic device embedding mxene for efficient filtration of urea

Aim and background: end stage kidney disease (eskd) is a severe life-threatening disease that causes over a million deaths worldwide every year. although kidney transplantation is the most promising way to treat eskd, prolong waiting time, high graft failure rate, and transplant-ineligibility force most patients to become dependent on dialysis treatment. for this however, eskd patients must spend at least 3 to 5 hours, twice a week, in a dialysis center to receive the treatment. nevertheless, these patients still face side effects and the quality of their life quickly deteriorates. in this study, we introduce a simple microfluidic design comprised of a section that is capable of filtering urea, the primary waste product of nitrogen metabolism, from a urea containing aqueous solution. methods: once the microfluidic device was designed by lightburn software and fabricated using laser cnc on polymethyl methacrylate (pmma), 0.1 gr ti3c2tx mxene, an adsorbent of urea, was embedded in the adsorption section. 2 pieces of polyacrylonitrile (pan) nanofibers obtained by electrospinning were used between pmma layers to prevent mxene contamination in the output solution. to assess the amount of urea that mxene adsorbed, the urea solutions at 50 and 200 mg/dl concentrations were used and the concentration of urea was determined using darman faraz kave urea assay kit by reading the optical density (od) at 570 nm. results and discussion: the proposed microfluidic system with pan nanofiber and mxene could decrease urea in 50 and 200 mg/dl water-urea solutions by a factor of %26 and %27.5, respectively. conclusion: this result demonstrated that a microfluidic system with mxene as a urea adsorbent agent and pan nanofiber can be used as a device for urea filtration. this brings us steps closer towards mimicking a nephron functionality in the future.