• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.58-64
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• 2019

This study presents a novel method for preparing monodisperse polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA) microparticles in a dispensing needle based microfluidic device. The microfluidic devices are manufactured by manually assembling various off-the-shelf products without using additional equipment. In this microfluidic device, the volumetric flow rates of the dispersed phase of PEGDA solution and the continuous phase of oil are controlled to generate monodisperse PEGDA droplets. The PEGDA droplet contains photo-initiator thus it is crosslinked to microparticle by photopolymerization at the ends of the device. The particle size is easily controlled by adjusting the volume flow rate and the size of the microfluidic device. The monodispersity of the particles is calculated by a coefficient of variation of 2.57%. To demonstrate the biological applications of PEGDA particles, cells are encapsulated and observed for proliferation and viability.

• Clean Technology
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.283-288
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• 2019

Monodisperse microparticles has been particularly enabling for various applications in the encapsulation and delivery of pharmaceutical agents. The microfluidic devices are attractive candidates to produce highly uniform droplets that serve as templates to form monodisperse microparticles. The microfluidic devices that have micro-scale channel allow precise control of the balance between surface tension and viscous forces in two-phase flows. One of its essential abilities is to generate highly monodisperse droplets. In this paper, a microfluidic approach for preparing monodisperse polycaprolactone (PCL) microparticles is presented. The microfluidic devices that have a flow-focusing generator are manufactured by soft-lithography using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The crucial factors in the droplet generation are the controllability of size and monodispersity of the microdroplets. For this, the volumetric flow rates of the dispersed phase of oil solution and the continuous phase of water to generate monodisperse droplets are optimized. As a result, the optimal flow condition for droplet dripping region that is able to generate uniform droplet is found. Furthermore, the droplets containing PCL polymer by solvent evaporation after collection of droplet from device is solidified to generate the microparticle. The particle size can be controlled by tuning the flow rate and the size of the microchannel. The monodispersity of the PCL particles is measured by a coefficient of variation (CV) below 5%.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.251-258
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• 2022

Silk fibroin microparticles were fabricated using a phase separation technique between silk fibroin solution and polyvinyl alcohol. We found that the concentration of polyvinyl alcohol determines the size of microparticles. The mean diameter of the silk fibroin microparticles varied from 3.48 ㎛ to 4.05 ㎛. The silk fibroin microparticle size increased as a function of the concentration of PVA in aqueous silk solution. The resulting silk fibroin microparticles have narrow size distribution (i.e. monodisperse) and smooth/spherical surface. Also, we studied the effects of mouse serum, sodium phosphate buffer (PBS), and pH on the stability of the silk fibroin microparticles. Overall, we demonstrated the simple method to fabricate and to control the silk fibroin microparticles that makes our silk microparticles to be usable for a potential drug delivery carrier.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.761-766
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• 2018

Droplet-based microfluidic device has led to transformational new approaches in various applications including materials synthesis and high-throughput screening. However, efforts are required to enhance the production rate to industrial scale because of low production rate in a single droplet generator. In here, we present a method for enhancing production rate of monodisperse droplets via parallelization of flow-focusing generators. For this, we fabricated a three-dimensional monolithic elastomer device (3D MED) that has the 3D channel structures in a single layer, using a double-sided imprinting method. We demonstrated that the production rate of monodisperse droplet is increased by controlling the flow rate of continuous and dispersed phases in 3D MED with 8 droplet generators. Thus, we anticipate that this microfluidic system will be used in wide area including microparticle synthesis and screening system via encapsulation of various materials and cells in monodisperse droplets.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.60 no.1
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• pp.139-144
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• 2022

This study reports a microfluidic approach to produce monodisperse hydrogel microparticles in a simple and highly efficient manner. Specifically, we produce double emulsion drops with a thin oil shell surrounding an aqueous prepolymer solution, which is solidified via UV-induced free radical polymerization. When they are dispersed in an aqueous solution, the oil shell is dewetted due to the absence of surfactants, resulting in production of highly uniform hydrogel microparticles (C.V.=1%). Results show that production of monodisperse hydrogel microparticles with controllable size and composition can be achieved with minimal use of oil unlike water-in-oil (w/o) single emulsion-based approach. Furthermore, in-depth study of flow patterns in microfluidic device using a phase diagram exhibits a crucial relationship among relative flow rates while providing windows of readily controllable parameters for reliable manufacturing of hydrogel microparticles.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.88-94
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• 2019

Triplet-triplet annihilation upconversion (TTA-UC) is a photochemical process wherein two or more low-energy photons are converted to a high-energy photon through a special energy transfer mechanism. Herein, we report a strategy to enhance the efficiency of TTA-UC through the light-scattering effect induced by silica microparticles (SM) embedded in polymeric thin films. By incorporating monodisperse uniform silica microparticles with a uniform size of 950 nm synthesized by $St{\ddot{o}}ber$-based seeded growth method into UC polymeric thin films, the UC intensity in the 430-570 nm range was enhanced by as much as 64% when irradiated by 635 nm laser. Analyzing the lifetime of PdTPBP phosphorescence revealed that the presence of SM in the UC layer does not affect triplet-triplet energy transfer (TTET) between sensitizers and acceptors, supporting the enhancement of TTA-UC originated from the light-scattering effect. On the other hand, the incorporation of SM in UC layer is shown to enhance the triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA) efficiency, which results in a 1.5-fold increase of the ${\Phi}_{UC}$, by scattering light source and thus increasing the number of excited photons to be utilized in TTA-UC process.