The Effect of Surface Roughness on Sperm Motility

Background: Microfluidics for male infertility is a solutionadopted in the recent years showing promising results in spermquantification, quality analysis, manipulation and isolation. Inmicrofluidic devices, sperm swim in a micro-confined environmentcomprising channel and walls that tries to mimic that ofthe female reproductive tract in vivo and thus the contact surfaceproperties as surface roughness affect sperm motility. Despitethe vital role of surface roughness at micro scales, few authorshave inves tigated its effect on cells other than the sperm,and there is almos t no research focusing on the effect of surfaceroughness on sperm motility.Materials and Methods: In the present s tudy, sperm motionagains t three dis tinct surfaces (severely etched, slightly etchedand control) was inves tigated both numerically and experimentally.Results: Our results showed that alteration in surface roughnessparameters such as increasing average roughness (Sa), leads tothe reduction of sperm velocity and in some cases, will end upin entrapment. Moreover, the results highlight that the numberof trapped sperm directly depends on the roughness parameters.Conclusion: Finally, the results sugges t that whether intentionalroughening or patterning of the surface or eliminatingthe surface roughness could be used as sperm sorting s trategieswhere the weaker sperm are hindered or trapped in the formercondition and the surface enhances sperm motion in the latter,which both are ongoing s tudies.

کلیدواژه ها:

Male Infertility ، Microfluidics ، Sperm Sorting ، SurfaceRoughness