Fabrication and applications of complex-shaped microparticles via microfluidics

Abstract

Complex-shaped microparticles (MPs) have attracted extensive interest in a myriad of scientific and engineering fields in recent years for their distinct morphology and capability in combining different functions within a single particle. Microfluidic techniques offer an intriguing method for fabricating MPs with excellent monodispersity and complex morphology in parallel while controlling their number and size precisely and independently. To date, there are two notable microfluidics approaches for the synthesis of complex-shaped MPs, namely droplet based, and flow-lithography based microfluidics approaches. It is undoubted that the application of complex-shaped MPs via microfluidic fabrication will hold great promise in a variety of fields including microfabrication, analytical chemistry and biomedicine.

Separation of main and satellite droplets in a deterministic lateral displacement microfluidic device

“…Microuidic droplet-generating technology is used in a growing number of applications such as droplet-based bioassays [1][2][3] including digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR) 4 and singlecell analysis, 5,6 and functional microparticles production [7][8][9][10] because it offers unprecedented ne control over size, structural and/or chemical compositions, and spatio-temporal arrangement of the produced droplets. To date, a number of studies have been conducted using a microuidic droplet generator (MFDG) such as T-shaped and ow focusing microchannels on a chip or three-dimensional coaxial microcapillary congurations.…”

Colonic delivery of indometacin loaded PGA-co-PDL microparticles coated with Eudragit L100-55 from fast disintegrating tablets

“…However, despite the promising results reported, the method of fabricating MPs is via the solvent emulsion evaporation technique, and there is possibility of the MPs size and encapsulation efficiency changing during scale-up. An alternative is to use microfluidic strategies, which allows control of process parameters enabling the fabrication of MPs of desired shape, size, and morphology and controlling encapsulation efficiency at the bench-scale to reproducible larger-scale production (Choi et al, 2017;Duncanson et al, 2012;Seo et al, 2015;Zhao, 2013). Furthermore, the advances in microfluidic systems such as multiple modules or parallelisation allows for scale-up and as technology improves, the cost will also be reduced ensuring more economical viable products for pharmaceutical companies and patients.…”

Rapid assembly of multilayer microfluidic structures via 3D-printed transfer molding and bonding

“…Although rounded channels are beneficial for some microfluidic applications, few groups have developed appropriate fabrication techniques (Supplementary Material S3.4) [8][9][10] because multilevel soft lithography has historically required multiple photolithography steps 11 . Although "grayscale lithography"-whereby resists are exposed to non-binary shades of gray-can potentially generate rounded microfluidic channels [12][13][14] , the process still requires multiple exposures to obtain larger aspect ratios 15,16 . Furthermore, although multilayer PDMS-manufacturing techniques have been demonstrated by several groups 17,18 , these are even more time-consuming and labor-intensive, requiring multiple lithography steps and precision alignment, issues that are only partially addressed by dedicated PDMS-alignment tools 19 .…”