Production of highly concentrated commodity thermoplastic NP suspensions with 3D printed confined impinging jet mixers and efficient downstream operations

Abstract

A wide application of polymeric nanoparticles (NP) is challenging due to the low productivity of their production methods. While flash nanoprecipitation (FNP) with confined impinging jet mixers is a fast and easily scalable approach, its vast application is still limited due to the scarce availability of mixers and the production of dilute suspensions. This research proposes a modified additive manufacturing route to efficiently and flexibly manufacture polypropylene micromixers. The effects of process and formulation parameters on the size of poly(methyl methacrylate) particles were found to be consistent with literature, thus proving the robustness and suitability of the system to run a FNP process with commodity thermoplastics. By tuning the downstream operations, stable nanosuspensions with 300 mg mL −1 polymer concentration and particle size in the range of 300 nm were produced. This approach for high-volume production of concentrated NP suspensions opens new application scenarios of nanoparticulate materials in commodity sectors such as textiles and coatings. • Robust, scalable, and easily accessible manufacturing of confined impinging jet mixers using modified additive process. • Flash nanoprecipitation with commodity thermoplastics. • Optimized downstream processing for production of concentrated nanoparticle suspensions. • Fully reversible agglomerates upon ultrasonication after storage.