Encapsulation of hydrophobic ingredients in hard resin capsules with ultrahigh efficiency using a superoleophobic material

Abstract

Spherical capsules have been used in various fields because of their many advantages. In many industrial applications, hydrophobic hard resins (e.g., polyacrylate, epoxy and polystyrene) are used as a shell material for stable packaging of ingredients within capsules. However, it is difficult to encapsulate ingredients in such capsules without loss by conventional techniques. The purpose of this study was to encapsulate hydrophobic ingredients within polyacrylate resin capsules with ultrahigh efficiency. In our methodology, a small volume of resin monomer solution containing the ingredients was first placed on a superoleophobic material and the resulting spherical droplets were then solidified by polymerization of the monomer. Doxorubicin (an anticancer drug), α-tocopherol (an antioxidant) and tetradecane (a phase change material used for heat storage) could be encapsulated in spherical hard capsules with almost no loss by heat and photopolymerization. We showed that tetradecane in the capsules had almost identical thermal properties to pure tetradecane. These results demonstrate that our technique is promising for encapsulation of hydrophobic ingredients in hard resin capsules.