Loading of Drug‐Polymer Matrices in Microreservoirs for Oral Drug Delivery

For major advances in microfabricated drug delivery systems (DDS), fabrication methods with high throughput using biocompatible polymers are required. Once these DDS are fabricated, loading of drug poses a significant challenge. Here, hot punching is presented as an innovative method for drug loading in microfabricated DDS. The microfabricated DDS are microcontainers fabricated in photoresist SU‐8 and biopolymer poly‐l‐lactic‐acid (PLLA). Furosemide (F) drug is embedded in poly‐ε‐caprolactone (PCL) polymer matrix. This F‐PCL drug polymer matrix is loaded in SU‐8 and PLLA microcontainers using hot punching with >99% yield. Thus, it is illustrated that hot punching allows high‐throughput, parallel loading of 3D polymer microcontainers with drug‐polymer matrices in a single process step. The process of hot punching that solves the challenge of loading microreservoirs based oral drug delivery devices with drug is presented here. It is a single‐step, high‐throughput, parallel process, where spin‐coated drug‐polymer film is punched by microreservoirs at high temperature and pressure, thereby loading the reservoirs.