Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155, United States.
Division of Cosmetic Science and Technology, Daegu Haany University, 1 Haanydaero, Gyeongsan-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do 38610, Republic of Korea.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2021 Mar 17;13(10):11579-11587. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c20081. Epub 2021 Mar 2.
We report a simple and rapid microfluidic approach to produce core-shell hydrogel microspheres in a single step. We exploit triple emulsion drops with sacrificial oil layers that separate two prepolymer phases, forming poly(ethylene glycol)-based core-shell microspheres via photopolymerization followed by spontaneous removal of the oil layer. Our technique enables the production of monodisperse core-shell microspheres with varying dimensions of each compartment by independently and precisely controlled flow rates. This leads to stable and uniform incorporation of functional moieties in the core compartment with negligible cross-contamination into the shell layer. Selective conjugation of biomolecules is enabled through a rapid bioorthogonal reaction with functional groups in the core compartment with minimal non-specific adsorption. Finally, in-depth protein conjugation kinetics studies using microspheres with varying shell porosities highlight the capability to provide tunable size-selective diffusion barriers by simple tuning of prepolymer compositions for the shell layer. Combined, these results illustrate a significant step forward for programmable high-throughput fabrication of multifunctional hydrogel microspheres, which possess substantial potential in a large array of biomedical and biochemical applications.
我们报告了一种简单而快速的微流控方法，可在一步内制备核壳水凝胶微球。我们利用具有牺牲油层的三重乳液液滴来分离两个预聚物相，通过光聚合形成基于聚（乙二醇）的核壳微球，然后自发去除油层。我们的技术可通过独立且精确控制的流速来生产具有不同尺寸各隔室的单分散核壳微球。这导致功能部分在核隔室中的稳定且均匀掺入，而壳层中几乎没有交叉污染。通过与核隔室中功能基团的快速生物正交反应，可实现生物分子的选择性偶联，而壳层中的非特异性吸附最小。最后，通过使用具有不同壳层孔隙率的微球进行深入的蛋白质偶联动力学研究，突出了通过简单调整壳层预聚物组成来提供可调尺寸选择扩散障碍的能力。总之，这些结果表明在多功能水凝胶微球的可编程高通量制造方面取得了重大进展，它们在大量生物医学和生化应用中具有巨大的潜力。
