Creation of Nonspherical Microparticles through Osmosis-Driven Arrested Coalescence of Microfluidic Emulsions
Creation of Nonspherical Microparticles through Osmosis-Driven Arrested Coalescence of Microfluidic Emulsions
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DOI：
10.1002/smll.201903884
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发表时间：
2019-09-11
期刊：
影响因子：
13.3
通讯作者：
Li, Guangtao
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Feng, Kai;Gao, Ning;Li, Guangtao
基于液滴的微流体能够生产球形乳液和微粒，但非球形乳液和微粒的高通量制造仍然具有挑战性，因为界面张力在制备过程中起着主导作用。在此，引入含有盐的离子液体（IL）作为水包油包油双乳液的内核，其具有足够的渗透压以实现水传输和相分离，并表明可以通过渗透驱动的内核阻聚聚结来构建非球形乳液。随后，非球形乳液的紫外线聚合产生非球形微粒。通过调整内核的数量、成分和尺寸以及聚结时间，可以创建哑铃形、杆形、纺锤形、雪人形、不倒翁形、三尖星形、三角形和不等边三角形等各种非球形形状。重要的是，受益于离子液体优异的溶解能力，该系统可以作为生产由不同材料制成的非球形微粒的通用平台。此外，通过控制渗透压，可以实现双乳液中内核的程序聚结，这表明了构建微反应器的潜力。因此，首次开发了一种简单且高通量的策略来创建具有受阻聚结形状的非球形微粒，并且可以进一步用于构建新型材料和微反应器。
Droplet-based microfluidics enable the production of emulsions and microparticles with spherical shapes, but the high-throughput fabrication of nonspherical emulsions and microparticles still remains challenging because interfacial tension plays a dominant role during preparation. Herein, ionic liquids (ILs) containing salts, which possess sufficient osmotic pressure to realize water transport and phase separation, are introduced as inner cores of oil-in-oil-in-water double emulsions and it is shown that nonspherical emulsions can be constructed by osmosis-driven arrested coalescence of inner cores. Subsequently, ultraviolet polymerization of the nonspherical emulsions leads to nonspherical microparticles. By tailoring the number, composition, and size of inner cores as well as coalescence time, a variety of nonspherical shapes such as dumbbell, rod, spindle, snowman, tumbler, three-pointed star, triangle, and scalene triangle are created. Importantly, benefitting from excellent solvency of ILs, this system can serve as a general platform to produce nonspherical microparticles made from different materials. Moreover, by controlling the osmotic pressure, programmed coalescence of inner cores in double emulsions is realizable, which indicates the potential to build microreactors. Thus, a simple and high-throughput strategy to create nonspherical microparticles with arrested coalescence shapes is developed for the first time and can be further used to construct novel materials and microreactors.