A Scalable Microfluidic Platform for Nanoparticle Formulation: For Exploratory- and Industrial-Level Scales.

Abstract

Nanoparticle synthesis on microfluidic platforms provides excellent reproducibility and control over bulk synthesis. While there have been plenty of platforms for producing nanoparticles (NPs) with controlled physicochemical properties, such platforms often operate in a narrow range of predefined flow rates. The flow rate limitation restricts either up-scalability for industrial production or down-scalability for exploratory research use. Here, we present a universal flow rate platform that operates over a wide range of flow rates (0.1-75 mL/min) for small-scale exploratory research and industrial-level synthesis of NPs without compromising the mixing capabilities. The wide range of flow rate is obtained by using a coaxial flow with a triangular microstructure to create a vortex regardless of the flow regime (Reynolds number). The chip synthesizes several types of NPs for gene and protein delivery, including polyplex, lipid NPs, and solid polymer NPs via self-assembly and precipitation, and successfully expresses GFP plasmid DNA in human T cells.