Packing of Emulsion Droplets: Structural and Functional Motifs for Multi‐Cored Microcapsules

Abstract

Advances in microfluidic emulsification have enabled the creation of multiphase emulsion drops, which have emerged as promising templates for producing functional microcapsules. However, most previous micro‐encapsulation methods have limitations in terms of capsule stability, functionality, and simplicity of fabrication procedures. Here, we report a simple single‐step encapsulation technique that uses an optofluidic platform to efficiently and precisely encapsulate a specific number of emulsion droplets in photocurable shell droplets. In particular, we show, for the first time, that densely confined core droplets within an oily shell droplet rearrange into a unique configuration that minimizes the interfacial energy, as confirmed here from theory. These structures are then consolidated into multi‐cored microcapsules with structural and mechanical stability through in situ photopolymerization of the shell in a continuous mode, which are capable of isolating active materials and releasing them in a controlled manner using well‐defined nanohole arrays or nanoscopic silver architectures on thin membranes.

Delayed Buckling and Guided Folding of Inhomogeneous Capsules

“…To do this, we form double emulsions with two or three inner droplets of radii larger than half the radius of the outer droplet. Consequently, the inner droplets pack closely to form dimers or trimers [40], as shown schematically in Fig. 3.…”

Droplet Clusters: Exploring the Phase Space of Soft Mesoscale Atoms

“…We note that the same structures can be obtained with the use of a passive coflow breakup mechanism. Indeed, packing of droplets in double emulsions have also been previously observed by Kim et al [23] who used concentric capillaries. The authors synthesized solid particles by UV curing the multiple droplets.…”

Microfluidic fabrication of magnetic porous multi-walled carbon nanotube beads for oil and organic solvent adsorption

“…Because of the ability to control the space structure of the emulsion in nal, microuidic techniques have emerged as a promising and versatile technique for generating monodisperse single or multiple emulsion droplets. [23][24][25][26][27] These droplets have been applied as templates to fabricate polymeric particles and composite particles with complicated structures for different applications. [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] However, the generation of porous MCNT adsorbents via this approach and their adsorption properties still remain unexplored.…”