Date Approved

2-10-2021

Embargo Period

2-17-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.S. Chemical Engineering

Department

Chemical Engineering

College

Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering

Advisor

Haase, Martin F.

Committee Member 1

Hesketh, Robert

Committee Member 2

Noshadi, Iman

Subject(s)

Microfluidics; Emulsions

Disciplines

Chemical Engineering

Abstract

This thesis introduces a microfluidic method to generate monodisperse water-in-oil-in water double emulsions. The microfluidic method is able to produce double emulsions with high degree of controllability and flexibility on size and number of droplets. We demonstrate this by producing double emulsions containing 1-8 inner water droplets and studied their dewetting phenomena to lipid bilayer scaffold. Our study shows that for the dewetting phenomenon to occur the oil must be volatile, polar and should make low contact angle with the involved interfaces. The chloroform shows self-emulsification behavior in presence of surfactant F127. The topological droplets formation with multiple compartments is related to the self-emulsification behavior. These distinct compartments segregated from one another shows potential to engineer multistep reaction pathways inside them. Our investigation is mainly focused on the fabrication of permanently stable dewetting cages by using polymeric oil, acrylate monomers and functionalized silica particles. Similar to the chloroform, monomeric oil ethylene glycol methyl ether methacrylate also shows self -emulsification behavior and induce dewetting mechanism by making low contact angle at the contact line. Silica nanoparticles supported lipid bilayer shows long term stability due to presence of a solid silica core.

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