title: Submerged electrosprays: a versatile approach for microencapsulation.
abstract: The unearthing of fundamental science and technology associated with microencapsulation is an ongoing exciting scientific endeavour focused on by several scientists. Encapsulated structures (containing either a gas, molecules or materials) previously have been shown as having widespread applications across the physical and life sciences. In particular, such methodologies used for forming encapsulations in medical-related studies have shown great promise from diagnostics and imaging, to gene therapy and drug delivery which are only a few amongst several other applications. At present there are numerous 'jet-based' manifestations available for microencapsulation, these primarily root from either capillary or channel-based techniques. The driving mechanisms employed in these approaches exploit aerodynamic/pressure gradients to piezoelectricity. In this paper submerged electrosprays a multipurpose electric field driven jet-based technique is explored for forming near mono-dispersed encapsulations sized in the micrometer range. Our studies elucidate the ability to form microencapsulations containing either a gas or a micro/nanoparticulate-based material suspension as capsules sized in the ranges approximately 65-80 microm, approximately 8-25 microm to approximately 3-14 microm, respectively. We believe this technique can significantly contribute to the microencapsulation field of research based on both the size of the generated encapsulations to the containment of immiscible high viscosity particulate-based suspensions. Furthermore our investigations show the ability to control the production of these encapsulations in terms of both their size and rate of generation with ease; hence demonstrating this electrospray-assisted microencapsulation route as having a wide range of applications. It should be noted that in its present form this technique could be explored for generating emulsions with a variety of materials especially with living organisms for applications in the clinical and biomedical areas of research.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College London. UK. s.jayasinghe@ucl.ac.uk
authors.forename: S N
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Jayasinghe
mesh_terms: D004339:Drug Compounding / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D004563:Electrochemistry / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D005740:Gases; D045423:Microbubbles; D053758:Nanoparticles; D010316:Particle Size; D014783:Viscosity
chemical_list: D005740:Gases