Microfluidic-assisted silk nanoparticle tuning.

ABSTRACT: Silk is now making inroads into advanced pharmaceutical and biomedical applications. Both bottom-up and top-down approaches can be applied to silk and the resulting aqueous silk solution can be processed into a range of material formats, including nanoparticles. Here, we demonstrate the potential of microfluidics for the continuous production of silk nanoparticles with tuned particle characteristics. Our microfluidic-based design ensured efficient mixing of different solvent phases at the nanoliter scale, in addition to controlling the solvent ratio and flow rates. The total flow rate and aqueous : solvent ratios were important parameters affecting yield (1 mL min^-1 > 12 mL min^-1). The ratios also affected size and stability; a solvent : aqueous total flow ratio of 5 

SUBMITTER: Wongpinyochit T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9473249 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature