title: Non-spherical soft supraparticles from microgel building blocks.
abstract: Microgel particles can be fabricated with great control by droplet-based microfluidics; however, to this end, their shape is intrinsically limited to be spherical. Existing approaches to circumvent this limitation rely on the rapid interception of transient non-spherical preparticle shapes, greatly limiting their versatility. This paper presents a facile microfluidic approach that overcomes this limitation. The method utilizes the injection of scaffolding microgel particles into droplets that have insufficient volumes to host the microgels in a spherical shell. As a result, the drops adopt non-spherical equilibrium shapes that serve to template non-spherical soft supraparticles by slow and gentle chemical reactions.
authors.affiliation: Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, F-I2 Soft Matter and Functional Materials, Hahn-Meitner-Platz 1, D-14109 Berlin, Germany. sebastian.seiffert@helmholtz-berlin.de
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Seiffert
mesh_terms: D005782:Gels / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry*; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques; D010316:Particle Size; D013499:Surface Properties
chemical_list: D005782:Gels