A research team led by Prof. Dr. Bettina Wiegmann at Hannover Medical School (MHH) has developed a new membrane architecture for artificial lungs that achieves up to 88% higher oxygen transfer than current hollow-fiber membranes used in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) systems. The study, published in Advanced Materials, was conducted in collaboration with researchers from RWTH Aachen University as part of a German Research Foundation priority program toward an implantable lung.
Conventional ECMO systems pass blood through bundles of parallel hollow-fiber membranes that resemble tiny straws. This arrangement creates turbulence and uneven flow distribution, limiting gas-exchange efficiency and increasing the risk of blood clots forming on the artificial surfaces. These limitations restrict ECMO to temporary lung support.
The new design uses triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) structures, which form a continuous three-dimensional network rather than discrete parallel fibers. This geometry distributes blood more evenly, reduces flow resistance, and provides a large surface area for gas exchange within a compact volume, similar to natural alveoli. The TPMS membranes are fabricated from a biocompatible, nontoxic silicone polymer that is highly permeable to oxygen and carbon dioxide and can be colonized by endothelial cells.
In laboratory testing, the optimized TPMS architectures demonstrated up to 88% higher oxygen transfer compared with conventional hollow-fiber membranes. According to Wiegmann, this improvement could allow the same or better oxygen supply with significantly smaller artificial lungs, making ECMO systems more efficient, compact, and better tolerated by blood even without cellular seeding.
The long-term goal of the research is to use patient CT scans as templates to 3D-print individually tailored artificial lung segments or entire lungs. These could be seeded with the patient's own or genetically modified endothelial cells, which line natural blood vessels and regulate clotting, potentially enabling permanent implantable biohybrid lungs. The TPMS structure itself, however, already shows promise as a direct replacement for hollow-fiber membranes in current ECMO devices.
The study, authored by Michael Pflaum et al., appears in Advanced Materials (2026) under DOI 10.1002/adma.74361. The work was supported by the German Research Foundation and conducted at the Lower Saxony Centre for Biomedical Engineering, Implant Research and Development (NIFE).
3D-printed membrane increases oxygen transfer in artificial lungs by up to 88%
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