Clinical translation of photoacoustic imaging (PAI) has
been limited
by the lack of near-infrared (NIR) contrast agents with low toxicity
required for regulatory approval. Herein, J aggregates of indocyanine
green (ICG) with strong NIR absorbance were encapsulated at high loadings
within small 77 nm polymersomes (nanocapsules) composed of poly(lactide-co-glycolide-b-poly(ethylene glycol)) (PLGA-b-PEG) bilayers, thus enabling PAI of of breast and ovarian
cancer cells with high specificity and a sensitivity at the level
of ∼100 total cells. All of the major components of the polymersomes
are FDA approved and used in the clinic. During formation of polymersomes
with a water-in-oil-in-water double emulsion process, loss of ICG
from the ICG J aggregates was minimized by coating them with a layer
of branched polyethylenimine and by providing excess “sacrificial”
ICG to adsorb at the oil–water interfaces. The encapsulated
J aggregates were protected against dissociation by the polymersome
shell for 24 h in 100% fetal bovine serum, after which the polymersomes
biodegraded and the J aggregates dissociated to ICG monomers.
In
subsurface imaging and oil recovery where temperatures and salinities
are high, it is challenging to design polymer-coated nanoparticles
with low retention (high mobility) in porous rock. Herein, the grafting
of poly(2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonic acid-co-acrylic acid) (poly(AMPS-co-AA)) on magnetic iron
oxide nanoparticles was sufficiently uniform to achieve low adsorption
on model colloidal silica and crushed Berea sandstone in highly concentrated
API brine (8% NaCl and 2% CaCl2 by weight). The polymer
shell was grafted via amide bonds to an aminosilica layer, which was
grown on silica-coated magnetite nanoparticles. The particles were
found to be stable against aggregation in American Petroleum Institute
(API) brine at 90 °C for 24 h. For IO nanoparticles with ∼23%
polymer content, Langmuir adsorption capacities on colloidal silica
and crushed Berea Sandstone in batch experiments were extremely low
at only 0.07 and 0.09 mg of IO/m2, respectively. Furthermore,
upon injection of a 2.5 mg/mL IO suspension in API brine in a column
packed with crushed Berea sandstone, the dynamic adsorption of IO
nanoparticles was only 0.05 ± 0.01 mg/m2, which is
consistent with the batch experiment results. The uniformity and high
concentration of solvated poly(AMPS-co-AA) chains
on the IO surfaces provided electrosteric stabilization of the nanoparticle
dispersions and also weakened the interactions of the nanoparticles
with negatively charged silica and sandstone surfaces despite the
very large salinities.
Nanoparticle (NP) clusters with diameters ranging from 20 to 100 nm are reversibly assembled from 5 nm gold (Au) primary particles coated with glutathione (GSH) in aqueous solution as a function of pH in the range of 5.4 to 3.8. As the pH is lowered, the GSH surface ligands become partially zwitterionic and form interparticle hydrogen bonds that drive the self-limited assembly of metastable clusters in <1 min. Whereas clusters up to 20 nm in size are stable against cluster-cluster aggregation for up to 1 day, clusters up to 80 nm in size can be stabilized over this period via the addition of citrate to the solution in equal molarity with GSH molecules. The cluster diameter may be cycled reversibly by tuning pH to manipulate the colloidal interactions; however, modest background cluster-cluster aggregation occurs during cycling. Cluster sizes can be stabilized for at least 1 month via the addition of PEG-thiol as a grafted steric stabilizer, where PEG-grafted clusters dissociate back to starting primary NPs at pH 7 in fewer than 3 days. Whereas the presence of excess citrate has little effect on the initial size of the metastable clusters, it is necessary for both the cycling and dissociation to mediate the GSH-GSH hydrogen bonds. In summary, these metastable clusters exhibit significant characteristics of equilibrium self-limited assembly between primary particles and clusters on time scales where cluster-cluster aggregation is not present.
The synthesis of polymer grafted nanoparticles that are stable at high salinities and high temperature with low retention in porous media is of paramount importance for subsurface applications including electromagnetic imaging, enhanced oil recovery and environmental remediation. Herein, we present an improved approach to synthesize and purify sub-100 nm IONPs grafted with a random copolymer poly(AMPS-co-AA) (poly(2-acrylamido-3methylpropanesulfonate-co-acrylic acid)) by means of catalyzed amide bond formation at room temperature. The improved and uniform polymer grafting of magnetic nanoparticles led to colloidal stability of IONPs at high temperature (120 °C) in API for a month. The transport behavior of the polymer grafted IONPs was investigated in crushed and in consolidated Berea sandstone. The high poly (AMPS-co-AA) polymer level on the surface (~34%) provided electrosteric stabilization between the NPs and weak interactions of the NPs with anionic silica and sandstone surfaces. This behavior was enabled by low affinity of Ca 2+ towards the highly acidic AMPS monomers thus enabling strong solvation in API brine. In crushed Berea sandstone, the retention was reduced by three fold and nine fold relative to our earlier studies, given the improvements in the grafted polymer layer. For intact core flood experiments in Berea sandstone carried out at elevated temperature (65 o C) and pressure (1000 psi net confining stress), the retention was 519 µg/g, comparable to the value for crushed Berea sandstone. Furthermore, the addition of a relatively small amount (0.1% v/v) of commercially available sacrificial polymer (e.g., HEC-10) further reduced IONP retention to 252 µg/g or 0.17 mg/m 2 by blocking retentive sites.
The self-assembly of citrate-capped Au nanoparticles (5 nm) resulted in branched nanochains by adding CaCl2 versus spherical nanoclusters for NaCl. These assemblies were formed between 1 s to 30 min by tuning the electrostatic repulsion and the interparticle bridging attraction between the cations and citrate ligands as a function of electrolyte concentration. For dilute Ca(2+), strong interparticle bridging favored particle attachment at chain ends. This resulted in the formation of small, branched chains with lengths as short as 20 nm, due to the large Debye length for the diffuse counterions. Furthermore, the bridging produced very small interparticle spacings and sintering, as evident in high-resolution TEM despite the low temperature. This morphology produced a large red shift in the surface plasmon resonance, as characterized by a broad extinction peak with NIR absorption out to 1000 nm, which is unusual for such small particles. Whereas these properties were seen for primary particles with partial citrate monolayers, the degrees of sintering and NIR extinction were small in the case of citrate multilayers. The ability to design the size and shape of nanoparticle clusters as well as the interparticle spacing by tuning bridging and electrostatic interactions may be expected to be quite general and of broad applicability in materials synthesis.
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