Lathia Rutvik, Nagpal Satchit, Modak Chandantaru Dey, Mishra Satyarthi, Sharma Deepak, Reddy Bheema Sankar, Nukala Pavan, Bhat Ramray, Sen Prosenjit
Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India.
Department of Developmental Biology and Genetics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India.
Nat Commun. 2023 Oct 13;14(1):6445. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-41977-1.
Droplet encapsulations using liquid or solid shells are of significant interest in microreactors, drug delivery, crystallization, and cell growth applications. Despite progress in droplet-related technologies, tuning micron-scale shell thickness over a large range of droplet sizes is still a major challenge. In this work, we report capillary force assisted cloaking using hydrophobic colloidal particles and liquid-infused surfaces. The technique produces uniform solid and liquid shell encapsulations over a broad range (5-200 μm shell thickness for droplet volume spanning over four orders of magnitude). Tunable liquid encapsulation is shown to reduce the evaporation rate of droplets by up to 200 times with a wide tunability in lifetime (1.5 h to 12 days). Further, we propose using the technique for single crystals and cell/spheroid culture platforms. Stimuli-responsive solid shells show hermetic encapsulation with tunable strength and dissolution time. Moreover, scalability, and versatility of the technique is demonstrated for on-chip applications.
使用液体或固体壳层的液滴封装在微反应器、药物递送、结晶和细胞生长应用中具有重大意义。尽管与液滴相关的技术取得了进展，但在大范围的液滴尺寸上调节微米级壳层厚度仍然是一项重大挑战。在这项工作中，我们报告了使用疏水胶体颗粒和液体注入表面的毛细管力辅助隐形。该技术在很宽的范围内（对于跨越四个数量级的液滴体积，壳层厚度为5-200μm）产生均匀的固体和液体壳层封装。可调谐的液体封装显示出可将液滴的蒸发速率降低多达200倍，并且在寿命方面具有广泛的可调性（1.5小时至12天）。此外，我们提出将该技术用于单晶和细胞/球体培养平台。刺激响应性固体壳层显示出具有可调强度和溶解时间的密封封装。此外，该技术的可扩展性和通用性在芯片应用中得到了证明。
