Abstract
Polymeric microparticles were produced following a three-step procedure involving (i) the production of an aqueous nanoemulsion of tri and monofunctional acrylate-based monomers droplets by an elongational-flow microemulsifier, (ii) the production of a nanosuspension upon the continuous-flow UV-initiated miniemulsion polymerization of the above nanoemulsion and (iii) the production of core-shell polymeric microparticles by means of a microfluidic capillaries-based double droplets generator; the core phase was composed of the above nanosuspension admixed with a water-soluble monomer and gold salt, the shell phase comprised a trifunctional monomer, diethylene glycol and a silver salt; both phases were photopolymerized on-the-fly upon droplet formation. Resulting microparticles were extensively analyzed by energy dispersive X-rays spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy to reveal the core-shell morphology, the presence of silver nanoparticles in the shell, organic nanoparticles in the core but failed to reveal the presence of the gold nanoparticles in the core presumably due to their too small size (c.a. 2.5 nm). Nevertheless, the reddish appearance of the as such prepared polymer microparticles emphasized that this three-step procedure allowed the easy elaboration of composite/hybrid multi-scale and multi-domain polymeric microparticles.
Highlights
It was observed that a reduction in the characteristic dimension of the microsystem, e.g., the channel width for the terrace-like microchannel and T-junction devices, the orifice width for the flow focusing microchannel device (FFD) and the inner capillary diameter for the capillary-based devices, generates smaller particles
We present a facile microfluidic route to the preparation of core-shell polymer microparticles selectively doped with polymer and metal nanoparticles by following a three-step procedure
Two centimeters centimeters the double droplet the same UV-arrangement usedwas in second downstreamdownstream the double droplet formation, theformation, same UV-arrangement used in second step utilized step was utilized to polymerize the microdroplets into core-shell microparticles and to reduce the to polymerize the microdroplets into core-shell microparticles and to reduce the metal salts
Summary
Microfluidics is the science and technology of systems that process or manipulate small amounts of fluids (10−9 –10−18 L) using microchannels with dimensions of tens to hundreds of micrometers [1]. It was observed that a reduction in the characteristic dimension of the microsystem, e.g., the channel width for the terrace-like microchannel and T-junction devices, the orifice width for the FFD and the inner capillary diameter for the capillary-based devices, generates smaller particles. If microfluidic polymer micro and nanoparticles have already found separately applications in many fields such as drug release [36,37,38], sensorics [39] to name a few, they were scarcely combined to produce new materials like composite/hybrid multi-scale and multi-domain polymeric microparticles. In such objects, polymer nanoparticles and possibly inorganic nanoparticles are selectively embedded into different domains of a polymeric microparticle. Morphological structure and chemical Z-contrast (COMPO) of the microparticles were extensively characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive X-rays spectrometry (EDXS) respectively
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