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The Effect of Stabilizer on the Mechanical Response of Double‐Emulsion‐Templated Polymersomes
Author(s) -
Jang WooSik,
Park Seung Chul,
Kim Miju,
Doh Junsang,
Lee Daeyeon,
Hammer Daniel A.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
macromolecular rapid communications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.348
H-Index - 154
eISSN - 1521-3927
pISSN - 1022-1336
DOI - 10.1002/marc.201400472
Subject(s) - polymersome , materials science , polyvinyl alcohol , emulsion , chemical engineering , stabilizer (aeronautics) , bovine serum albumin , polymer chemistry , polymer , chemistry , copolymer , amphiphile , chromatography , composite material , engineering , mechanical engineering
Recent studies have shown that polymersomes templated by microfluidic double‐emulsion possess several advantages such as high monodispersity and encapsulation efficiency compared with those generated based on thin‐film rehydration and electroformation. Stabilizers, including bovine serum albumin (BSA) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), have been used to enhance the formation and stability of double emulsions that are used as templates for the generation of polymersomes. In this work, the effect of stabilizers on the mechanical response of double‐emulsion‐templated polymersomes using micropipette aspiration is investigated. It is demonstrated that the existence of stabilizers results in the inelastic response in polymersomes in the early stage of solvent removal. However, aged polymersomes that have little residual solvent show elastic behavior. Polymersomes prepared from PVA‐stabilized double emulsions have noticeably lower area expansion moduli than polymersomes prepared from stabilizer‐free and BSA‐stabilized double emulsions, suggesting that PVA is incorporated in the bilayer membrane of polymersomes.