When semiconductors meet biology

3D printing living tissue with semiconductor-style precision.

I didn’t expect to hear that combination of words. But that’s just what happened when I was chatting with someone from Phase, Inc. the other day.

When I heard it, it didn’t sound real. Let’s go through it to understand it together.

The problem they’re solving #

Organ-on-a-chip devices are miniature models of human organs used for drug testing. They’re basically living tissue grown on microfluidic chips that simulate organ function.

The pain point: drugs that work in mice fail in humans because our biology is different. Billions get wasted on failed trials. Traditional manufacturing methods like soft lithography take weeks and can barely handle 3D structures. Meanwhile, regulatory pressure is mounting to move away from animal testing entirely.

Phase needed something faster, more precise, and capable of complex 3D architectures.

The unexpected solution #

Phase figured out how to 3D print PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane). PDMS is the industry’s preferred silicone polymer that nobody could 3D print for over 20 years. They treat biology manufacturing like semiconductor fabrication: micron-level precision, embedded sensors, electrodes, and microfluidic channels all printed in hours instead of weeks.

The key insight wasn’t inventing new biology techniques. It was recognizing that semiconductor manufacturing had already solved the precision problem. They just had to adapt those solutions to work with living tissue scaffolds.

Fields collide #

This isn’t unique to biotech. Software engineering is built on borrowing solutions from unexpected places:

• Real-time 3D graphics techniques now power complex data dashboards
• GPUs designed for gaming accidentally enabled the AI revolution

The common thread: mature techniques from one domain’s “solved problems” tackle another domain’s hard problems.

Why does this work? Every field develops specialized solutions to its constraints. When you apply those solutions to a different set of constraints, you often get breakthroughs. The technique is proven, but it just needed a new context.

What this means #

When you’re stuck on a hard problem, ask: “Who else has already solved something like this?”

Phase is building blood-brain barrier models by thinking like semiconductor manufacturers. They’re not trying to incrementally improve biology techniques.. they’re importing an entirely different paradigm.

The next breakthrough in your field probably already exists in someone else’s.

The best solutions often come from the most unexpected places.