Abstract
Wearable artificial kidney is expected to drastically improve quality of life of patients who have to undergo dialysis treatment 3 times a week. Our group has been developing microfluidic systems containing polyethersulfone (PES) membranes that allow only low molecular weight ions to pass through and block large molecules, such as proteins. In this paper, we report the results of dialysis experiments using cattle blood. We found that the electrolytes permeated through the PES membranes while blood cells and proteins did not, which led to hemolysis of blood cells. We also investigated sticking of platelets onto the PES membranes.
