Anisotropic collagen-based biomaterials have gained significant attention in the fields of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. They have shown great potential for wound dressing, corneal grafting, and exploring the mechanism of cancer cell invasion. Various external physical field-based methods for the fabrication of anisotropic collagen-based biomaterials have been developed, including electrospinning, microfluidic shearing, mechanical loading, and so on. In this study, we put forward an acoustic streaming-based method that uses acoustic wave-induced fluid streaming to control collagen self-assembly and fiber arrangement. Our acoustic device leverages a piezoelectric transducer to generate traveling acoustic waves in fluids, and the wave-fluid interaction further induces fluid streaming, known as acoustic streaming. If the fluid contains collagen macromolecules, the acoustic streaming is able to affect the collagen self-assembly process to create biomaterials containing directionally arranged collagen fibers along the streaming velocity direction. Therefore, this acoustic streaming-based method allows for manufacturing collagen hydrogel layers that contain acoustically arranged collagen fibers and have controlled anisotropic material properties. We performed a series of proof-of-concept experiments by using a fabricated acoustic device to control the self-assembly process of collagens loaded in a Petri dish. Our results show the effectiveness of arranging collagen fibers that follow the flow direction of acoustic streaming. To better understand the collagen manipulation mechanism, we used particle image velocimetry to characterize the acoustic wave-induced fluid streaming. We expect this study can contribute to the fabrication of collagen-based anisotropic biomaterials for biomedical applications.
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