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Self-assembled polysulfone nanoparticles using microfluidic chip

Abstract:

This article reports a microfluidics-based method for the preparation of polysulfone nanoparticles. Upon mixing polysulfone in a good solvent with pure water, polysulfone undergoes a coil-globule transition and forms nanometer-sized soft particles. A key to achieving small nanoparticle sizes is to change the solvent quality within a time frame shorter than the typical time of aggregation between polysulfone. Accordingly, we devised microfluidic devices relying on hydrodynamic flow focusing and we managed to obtain nanoparticle sizes below 100 nm, which is a significant improvement compared to latest nanoprecipitation methods We demonstrated the continuous encapsulation of FITC dyes into polysulfone nanoparticles as well and we envision the use of these biocompatible fluorescent polysulfone nanoparticles for biological imaging.