Magnetic Field-assisted Fabrication and Manipulation of Non-Spherical Polymer Particles in Ferrofluid-based Droplet Microfluidics
The inventionis a method-device combination for the reproducible fabrication ofmicroparticles for drug-delivery, bioimaging, biometrics and special tagging,among other buses. Non-spherical particles are beneficial fordrug delivery, bioimaging and biometrics due to their large surface area. Thedominant shape of polymer particles has been spherical because of the difficultyof manufacturing large quantities of monodispersed particles with tunableshapes and sizes. This process controls the shape and assembly of polymerdroplets within a flow-focusing droplet microfluidic device to formnon-spherical particles and chains. The method relies on water-based magneticliquid (ferrofluid) as a continuous phase to (1) induce droplet formation (2)controllably change the shape of droplets, and (3) assemble droplets intochains. These ferrofluids induce magnetic dipole movement within the droplets,making it possible for the droplets to deform to non-spherical shapes andassemble into chains of tunable lengths.
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