We have developed simplified microfluidic droplet generators and employed them to fabricate anisotropic polymer particles and capsules in the size range of 100–500 μm. We used cheap and generally available materials and equipment to design and assemble microfluidic devices. All our devices were made of standard wall borosilicate capillaries (OD 1.0mm, ID 0.58mm), steel dispensing needles without bevel (30 G, 32 G), microscopy glass slides, fast-curing epoxy glue (Araldite-80805) and diamond scribe to process the glass. We designed four different geometries for each device, which can be separated for two groups: single and double droplet generators. The performance of the devices was validated using computational fluid dynamics and laboratory experiments. First of all, we tried to fabricate intricate single emulsion droplets and then moved on to double emulsion droplets. The range of the fabricated particles and capsules includes anisotropically-shaped amphiphilic polymer “microbuckets”, biphasic particles, capsules with various fillers and stimuli responsive polymer vesicles. To produce such objects we employed different functional monomers, for instance “clickable” glycidyl methacrylate or hydrophilic 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate. We also utilized several chemical and physical phenomena such as internal phase separation, wettability or polymer chain cross-linking to tune the properties of the synthesized particles. We investigated properties of the above mentioned particles and capsules. For example, “microbuckets” which are hydrophilic at the exterior surface, but hydrophobic inside the cavity, were able to withdraw oil droplets from an aqueous phase and “arrest” them inside the cavity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:582365 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Nurumbetov, Gabit E. |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/57225/ |
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