Capillary suspensions have gained popularity as an intriguing type of materials with tunable rheological behavior that can be applied to formulate novel materials such as low-fat foods or porous ceramics. Reported capillary suspensions work utilized ternary particle-liquid-liquid systems using liquid pair with different polarities. Although many applications of ATPS have been reported for cells spheroids preparation and biomolecules separation, there is virtually no work done so far on capillary suspensions of cells based on APTS as immiscible pair of aqueous liquids. We take the capillary suspension and APTS approaches further to fabricate novel cell clusters with different microstructures and networked morphologies by the addition of very small fractions of a secondary aqueous liquid phase (dextran solution) to a concentrated yeast cells suspension dispersed into the primary aqueous immiscible bulk phase (polyethylene glycol). Different cell microstructures can be obtained, and most stable system was achieved at 1 vol% of the secondary aqueous phase that forms bridges between the cells and forms a 3D network. We also show that the rheological data are consistent with the different microstructures formed. The present new approach can pave the way for cost-effective preparation of cell networks for potential application in 3D cell culturing and tissue engineering.
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