Polymer Nanoparticles Synthesis in Microjets of Supercritical Fluids

Speaker: Abhijit Gokhale

Advisor: Dr. Boris Khusid

Co Advisors: Dr. Rajesh Dave and Dr. Robert Pfeffer

 Abstract

There is wide range of applications of polymer nanoparticles in pharmaceutical industry and related fields, like biological labels, drug delivery systems, tissue engineering to name a few. Rapid progress in synthesis of nanoparticles having tailoring properties show a rosy picture for the development of future medicines and related products. Conventional particle formation processes have certain disadvantages of providing less control on the particle size distribution, particle morphology, purity and rusticity.

The new technology, which utilizes supercritical fluids for manufacturing micro- and nano- polymer particles, shows great promise in the area of pharmaceutical materials and drug delivery systems. Current research in this area focuses on the use of a mixture of good solvents for synthesizing particles. In contrast, we utilize a mixture of good and poor solvents in different proportions to fabricate polymer particles. Experiments are carried out on solutions of high molecular weight (Mw: 1,300,000 and 360,000) Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP). We study the effects of operating conditions on the particle formation. We found that that the use of a poor solvent is beneficial to form spherical particles having smooth surface and free of voids. Moreover, a poor solvent facilitates faster drying of newly formed particles and suppresses their agglomeration.