FIGURE 1.

Methods for islet microencapsulation. (a) Syringe pump‐based droplet generation. An alginate solution with the cell suspension is extruded from the syringe and crosslinked by bivalent cations. (b) Microfluidics‐based droplet generation. The aqueous solution with the cell suspension forms droplets in an organic phase. (c) Optimized microfluidic device. Adapted from Tomei et al. (2014). (d) Interfacial polymerization. The adsorbed CaCO₃ on the cell surface is released by acetic acid, and the released Ca ions induce alginate crosslinking. Adapted from Mao et al. (2017). (e) Comparison of droplet formation and interfacial polymerization in cell microencapsulation: The former method is associated with the formation of empty microcapsules and a large polymer volume, whereas the latter achieves nearly 100% encapsulation efficiency and uses a much smaller polymer volume.