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Controllable Microfluidic Fabrication of Microstructured Materials from Nonspherical Particles to Helices
Author(s) -
Wang Wei,
He XiaoHeng,
Zhang MaoJie,
Tang MengJiao,
Xie Rui,
Ju XiaoJie,
Liu Zhuang,
Chu LiangYin
Publication year - 2017
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.201700429
Subject(s) - microfluidics , materials science , nanotechnology , dispersity , fabrication , microchannel , microreactor , fiber , nanoparticle , polymer , magnetic nanoparticles , chemistry , polymer chemistry , composite material , catalysis , medicine , biochemistry , alternative medicine , pathology
This work reports on a facile and flexible strategy based on the deformation of encapsulated droplets in fiber‐like polymeric matrices for template synthesis of controllable microstructured materials from nonspherical microparticles to complex 3D helices. Monodisperse droplets generated from microfluidics are encapsulated into crosslinked polymeric networks via an interfacial crosslinking reaction in microchannel to in situ produce the droplet‐containing, fiber‐like matrices. By stretching and twining the dried fiber‐like matrices, the encapsulated droplets can be flexibly engineered into versatile shapes for template synthesis of controllable nonspherical microparticles and helices. Moreover, magnetic helices can be fabricated by simply dispersing magnetic Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles in the droplets to achieve rotational and translational motion under a rotated magnetic field. This work provides a simple and versatile strategy for the template synthesis of advanced functional microstructured materials with flexible shapes.