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Quick liquid packaging: Encasing water silhouettes by three-dimensional polymer membranes.

ABSTRACT: One of the most important substances on Earth is water. It is an essential medium for living microorganisms and for many technological and industrial processes. Confining water in an enclosed compartment without manipulating it or by using rigid containers can be very attractive, even more if the container is biocompatible and biodegradable. Here, we propose a water-based bottom-up approach for facile encasing of short-lived water silhouettes by a custom-made adaptive suit. A biocompatible polymer self-assembling with unprecedented degree of freedom over the water surface directly produces a thin membrane. The polymer film could be the external container of a liquid core or a free-standing layer with personalized design. The membranes produced have been characterized in terms of physical properties, morphology and proposed for various applications from nano- to macroscale. The process appears not to harm cells and microorganisms, opening the way to a breakthrough approach for organ-on-chip and lab-in-a-drop experiments.

SUBMITTER: Coppola S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6534387 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Quick liquid packaging: Encasing water silhouettes by three-dimensional polymer membranes.

Coppola Sara S Nasti Giuseppe G Vespini Veronica V Mecozzi Laura L Castaldo Rachele R Gentile Gennaro G Ventre Maurizio M Netti Paolo A PA Ferraro Pietro P

Science advances 20190524 5

One of the most important substances on Earth is water. It is an essential medium for living microorganisms and for many technological and industrial processes. Confining water in an enclosed compartment without manipulating it or by using rigid containers can be very attractive, even more if the container is biocompatible and biodegradable. Here, we propose a water-based bottom-up approach for facile encasing of short-lived water silhouettes by a custom-made adaptive suit. A biocompatible polym ...[more]

PMID: 31139742

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Project description:Liquid-infused membranes have been introduced to membrane technology recently. The infusion liquid can be expelled, opening the pore, in response to an immiscible feed liquid pressure. In the open state, the pore wall is still covered with the infusion liquid forming the so-called liquid-lined pores. Liquid lining is expected to give anti-fouling properties to these membranes. The pressure-responsive pores can be used for efficient sorting of fluids from a mixture based on interfacial tension. For example, in a two-phase mixture of immiscible liquids, the required liquid entry pressure is different for the constituent liquids. Here, we investigate the capability of liquid-infused membranes for selective permeation of the dispersed phase, that is, oil from an oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion. The separation experiments are conducted in a dead-end pressure-controlled filtration cell using liquid-infused and non-infused membranes. In order to permeate the dispersed phase, oil droplets should come in contact with the membrane surface which is accomplished here by gravity-driven creaming. Our results reveal that by setting the feed pressure between the entry pressure of oil and that of the surfactant solution, oil can be successfully permeated. For high concentrations of surfactants, water also permeated partly. The amount of water permeated through liquid-infused membranes is lower than that through non-infused membranes, caused by the corresponding interfacial tensions. The results suggest that the presence of the infusion liquid in the membrane gives rise to the formation of three-phase interfaces in the pore, namely, the interface between surfactant solution-oil (γ12) and that between oil-infusion liquid (γ23). Based on the interfacial energy contributions, the additional interface between oil and the infusion liquid gives rise to an increase in the liquid entry pressure for the surfactant solution based on the combined interfacial tension (γ12 + γ23) leading to less water permeation.

Dataset Information

Quick liquid packaging: Encasing water silhouettes by three-dimensional polymer membranes.

Publications

Quick liquid packaging: Encasing water silhouettes by three-dimensional polymer membranes.

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