Department of Physical and Analytical Chemistry, University of Oviedo, Spain; Department of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Technology, University of Oviedo, Spain.
Department of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Technology, University of Oviedo, Spain.
Colloids Surf B Biointerfaces. 2019 Oct 1;182:110378. doi: 10.1016/j.colsurfb.2019.110378. Epub 2019 Jul 18.
The new roles of vesicular systems in advanced biomedical, analytical and food science applications demand novel preparation processes designed to reach the new standards. Particle size and monodispersity have become essential properties to control. In this work, key parameters, involved in a microfluidic reactor with hydrodynamic flow focusing, were investigated in order to quantify their effects on niosomes morphology. Particular attention was given to temperature, which is both a requirement to handle non-ionic surfactants with phase transition temperature above RT, and a tailoring variable for size and monodispersity control. With this aim, niosomes with two different sorbitan esters and cholesterol as stabilizer were formulated. High resolution and conventional 3D-printing technologies were employed for the fabrication of microfluidic reactor and thermostatic systems, since this additive technology has been essential for microfluidics development in terms of cost-effective and rapid prototyping. A customised device to control temperature and facilitate visualization of the process was developed, which can be easily coupled with commercial inverted microscopes. The results demonstrated the capability of microfluidic production of niosomes within the full range of non-ionic surfactants and membrane stabilizers.
新型囊泡系统在先进的生物医学、分析和食品科学应用中的新角色要求设计新的制备工艺，以达到新标准。粒径和单分散性已成为控制的必要性质。在这项工作中，研究了具有流体动力学流动聚焦的微流反应器中的关键参数，以定量它们对非离子囊泡形态的影响。特别关注温度，它既是处理相变温度高于室温的非离子表面活性剂的要求，也是控制大小和单分散性的可调节变量。为此，使用两种不同的山梨糖醇酯和胆固醇作为稳定剂来制备非离子囊泡。高分辨率和传统的 3D 打印技术被用于制造微流反应器和恒温系统，因为这种增材技术在成本效益和快速原型制作方面对于微流控的发展至关重要。开发了一种用于控制温度和便于观察过程的定制设备，该设备可以轻松与商用倒置显微镜耦合。结果表明，微流控技术能够在非离子表面活性剂和膜稳定剂的全范围内生产非离子囊泡。
