I-Corps: Making a Stable Colloid from Small Molecules

这个项目的目的是开发一种基于发现稳定的含水胶体的产品设计。这种胶体体系的颗粒尺寸约为100纳米，仅由小的简单分子组成，与目前需要添加表面活性剂、电解液或粘度改进剂的工业工艺形成鲜明对比。胶体在医药和工业中被广泛用于制造液体产品，如药品、食品/饮料、农用化学品等。这一过程包括通过在水介质中分散疏水化合物并通过称为亲水聚合物的两亲小分子稳定它们来创建胶体体系。低分子量醇是亲水化合物的典型例子。创建这样一个系统只需要简单的混合，从而大大节省了原材料、设备和能源成本。到目前为止，这项技术已经被证明可以分散疏水化合物，如环己烷。这项提议旨在将基础研究发现和潜在的新应用联系起来，以便将这项研究转化为新的产品、工艺和服务。这个跨学科的项目是物理化学、分子物理、材料科学和化学工程的交叉点。拟议的研究将通过弥合基础、应用和商业化之间的差距来丰富工程教育。除了预期的商业目标，包括药品、食品/饮料、农用化学品、化妆品/洗涤剂，相关的商业前景还可以进一步扩展到更广泛的工业和医疗应用，如纳米胶囊药物输送或软物质工程。近年来，丙醇和丁醇异构体作为一种新的清洁能源，在水溶液中被认为是很有前途的乙醇替代品，引起了人们极大的兴趣。这些酒精可以通过新陈代谢工程产生，这涉及到细菌。在这些溶液中制作纳米胶体可以通过包裹细菌来控制新陈代谢速度。

The purpose of this project is the development of a product design based on the discovery of stable aqueous colloids. Such a colloidal system, with a particle size of about one hundred nanometer, consists only of small simple molecules, in contrast to current industrial processes where the addition of surfactants, electrolytes, or viscosity modifiers is needed. Colloids are widely used in medicine and industry to create liquid-based products such as pharmaceuticals, food/beverages, agrochemicals. The process consists of creating a colloidal system by dispersing hydrophobic compounds in an aqueous medium and stabilizing them by small amphiphilic molecules known as hydrotropes. Low molecular weight alcohols are typical examples of hydrotropes. The creation of such a system requires only simple mixing, thus contributing to significant savings in raw materials, equipment, and energy costs. This technology, so far, has been proven for dispersing hydrophobic compounds such as cyclohexane. This proposal aims to connect fundamental research discoveries and potential novel applications, so that this research can be transformed into new products, processes, and services. This interdisciplinary project is at the intersection of physical chemistry, molecular physics, materials science, and chemical engineering. The proposed research will enrich engineering education, by bridging the gap between fundamentals, applications, and commercialization. In addition to anticipated commercial targets, which include pharmaceuticals, food/beverages, agrochemicals, cosmetics/detergents, the relevant commercial landscape can be further extended to a much broader list of industrial and medical applications, such as nano-encapsulated drug delivery or soft-matter engineering. Recently, the interest in aqueous solutions of propanol and butanol isomers, as a new clean energy source, has greatly increased because such alcohols are considered promising alternatives to ethanol. These alcohols can be produced via metabolic engineering, which involves bacteria. Making nanosize colloids in these solutions could enable one to control the rate of metabolism through encapsulation of bacteria.