Generation of High-Order All-Aqueous Emulsion Drops by Osmosis-Driven Phase Separation

Youchuang Chao; Sze Yi Mak; Shakurur Rahman; Shipei Zhu; Ho Cheung Shum

doi:10.1002/smll.201802107

Generation of High-Order All-Aqueous Emulsion Drops by Osmosis-Driven Phase Separation

Youchuang Chao
, Sze Yi Mak
, Shakurur Rahman
, Shipei Zhu
, Ho Cheung Shum^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and Reviews › RGC 21 - Publication in refereed journal › peer-review

60 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Droplets containing ternary mixtures can spontaneously phase-separate into high-order structures upon a change in composition, which provides an alternative strategy to form multiphase droplets. However, existing strategies always involve nonaqueous solvents that limit the potential applications of the resulting multiple droplets, such as encapsulation of biomolecules. Here, a robust approach to achieve high-order emulsion drops with an all-aqueous nature from two aqueous phases by osmosis-induced phase separation on a microfluidic platform is presented. This technique is enabled by the existence of an interface of the two aqueous phases and phase separation caused by an osmolality difference between the two phases. The complexity of emulsion drops induced by phase separation could be controlled by varying the initial concentration of solutes and is systematically illustrated in a state diagram. In particular, this technique is utilized to successfully achieve high-order all-aqueous droplets in a different aqueous two-phase system. The proposed method is simple since it only requires two initial aqueous solutions for generating multilayered, organic-solvent-free all-aqueous emulsion drops, and thus these multiphase emulsion drops can be further tailored to serve as highly biocompatible material templates. © 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

Original language	English
Article number	1802107
Journal	Small
Volume	14
Issue number	39
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.201802107
Publication status	Published - 27 Sept 2018
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Publication details (e.g. title, author(s), publication statuses and dates) are captured on an “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE” basis at the time of record harvesting from the data source. Suggestions for further amendments or supplementary information can be sent to [email protected].

Funding

Y.C. and S.Y.M. contributed equally to this work. The authors thank Prof. Jasna Brujic, Dr. Tiantian Kong, and Miss Xin Fan for helpful discussions and kind experimental assistance. This research was supported by the General Research Fund (Nos. HKU 719813E, 17304514, 17306315, and 17329516) and the Collaborative Research Fund (C6004-14G) from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, the General Program (No. 21476189/B060201) and the Major Research plan (No. 91434202) from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, as well as the Seed Funding Programme for Basic Research (Nos. 201411159038 and 201511159280) from the University of Hong Kong.

Research Keywords

aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS)
high-order emulsion drops
nonequilibrium
osmosis
phase separation

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title = "Generation of High-Order All-Aqueous Emulsion Drops by Osmosis-Driven Phase Separation",

abstract = "Droplets containing ternary mixtures can spontaneously phase-separate into high-order structures upon a change in composition, which provides an alternative strategy to form multiphase droplets. However, existing strategies always involve nonaqueous solvents that limit the potential applications of the resulting multiple droplets, such as encapsulation of biomolecules. Here, a robust approach to achieve high-order emulsion drops with an all-aqueous nature from two aqueous phases by osmosis-induced phase separation on a microfluidic platform is presented. This technique is enabled by the existence of an interface of the two aqueous phases and phase separation caused by an osmolality difference between the two phases. The complexity of emulsion drops induced by phase separation could be controlled by varying the initial concentration of solutes and is systematically illustrated in a state diagram. In particular, this technique is utilized to successfully achieve high-order all-aqueous droplets in a different aqueous two-phase system. The proposed method is simple since it only requires two initial aqueous solutions for generating multilayered, organic-solvent-free all-aqueous emulsion drops, and thus these multiphase emulsion drops can be further tailored to serve as highly biocompatible material templates. {\textcopyright} 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH \& Co. KGaA, Weinheim",

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N2 - Droplets containing ternary mixtures can spontaneously phase-separate into high-order structures upon a change in composition, which provides an alternative strategy to form multiphase droplets. However, existing strategies always involve nonaqueous solvents that limit the potential applications of the resulting multiple droplets, such as encapsulation of biomolecules. Here, a robust approach to achieve high-order emulsion drops with an all-aqueous nature from two aqueous phases by osmosis-induced phase separation on a microfluidic platform is presented. This technique is enabled by the existence of an interface of the two aqueous phases and phase separation caused by an osmolality difference between the two phases. The complexity of emulsion drops induced by phase separation could be controlled by varying the initial concentration of solutes and is systematically illustrated in a state diagram. In particular, this technique is utilized to successfully achieve high-order all-aqueous droplets in a different aqueous two-phase system. The proposed method is simple since it only requires two initial aqueous solutions for generating multilayered, organic-solvent-free all-aqueous emulsion drops, and thus these multiphase emulsion drops can be further tailored to serve as highly biocompatible material templates. © 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

AB - Droplets containing ternary mixtures can spontaneously phase-separate into high-order structures upon a change in composition, which provides an alternative strategy to form multiphase droplets. However, existing strategies always involve nonaqueous solvents that limit the potential applications of the resulting multiple droplets, such as encapsulation of biomolecules. Here, a robust approach to achieve high-order emulsion drops with an all-aqueous nature from two aqueous phases by osmosis-induced phase separation on a microfluidic platform is presented. This technique is enabled by the existence of an interface of the two aqueous phases and phase separation caused by an osmolality difference between the two phases. The complexity of emulsion drops induced by phase separation could be controlled by varying the initial concentration of solutes and is systematically illustrated in a state diagram. In particular, this technique is utilized to successfully achieve high-order all-aqueous droplets in a different aqueous two-phase system. The proposed method is simple since it only requires two initial aqueous solutions for generating multilayered, organic-solvent-free all-aqueous emulsion drops, and thus these multiphase emulsion drops can be further tailored to serve as highly biocompatible material templates. © 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

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Generation of High-Order All-Aqueous Emulsion Drops by Osmosis-Driven Phase Separation

Abstract

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Research Keywords

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