Microfluidic approaches to the synthesis of complex polymeric particles

The synthesis of micron-sized polymeric particles with precise control over shape, monodispersity and chemistry is a technologically important objective. Varied applications including medical diagnostics. designer fabrics and optical devices could benefit from the availability of geometrically complex and chemically inhomogeneous particles. Microfluidics has recently emerged as an important alternative route to the synthesis of such complex particles. This thesis presents three new approaches to complex particle and structure synthesis in microfluidic devices. In the first approach. droplets formed by shearing a curable photopolymer. using a continuous water phase at a T-junction, were constrained to adopt non-spherical shapes by confining them using appropriate microchannel geometries. The non-spherical shapes formed were permanently preserved by photopolymerizing the constrained droplets in situ using focused ultraviolet (UV) light from an inverted microscope. The second and more general method called Continuous Flow Lithography (CFL) is a one-phase, projection photolithography based process to continuously synthesize polymeric microparticles in any 2-D extruded shape down to the colloidal length scale.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Chemical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Dendukuri, Dhananjay, 1978-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Patrick S. Doyle and T. Alan Hatton.

• Chemical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/38984

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/38984