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Fluid Dynamics Seminar

Monday, Sept. 12, 2011, 4:00 PM
Cullimore Lecture Hall, Room 611
New Jersey Institute of Technology

Electrodeless drop-on-demand printing of personalized medicines

Boris Khusid

Department of Chemical, Biological & Pharmaceutical Engineering, NJIT

Abstract

Noncontact drop-on-demand (DOD) systems (i.e., drops are formed only as required) appear to be the most promising platform technology for small-scale manufacturing of personalized treatments. It would provide the capability to form an individual dosage unit by printing a vast array of predefined amounts of therapeutics arranged in a specific pattern on a carrier substrate to achieve a desired drug release profile. However, current DOD methods developed for chemically and thermally stable, low-viscosity inks are of limited use for pharmaceuticals due to fundamentally different functional requirements. We present our recently developed DOD method for gentle printing of personalized medicines. To eliminate adverse effects of electrochemical reactions at the fluid-electrode interface, the fluid is infused into an electrically insulating nozzle to form a pendant drop that will serve as a floating electrode capacitively coupled to external electrodes. A short voltage pulse is applied to the electrodes to stretch the drop into a liquid bridge that will then break up creating a sessile drop on the substrate. Versatility is proved in experiments on fluids spanning over three orders of magnitude in viscosity and electric conductivity. Scaling analysis captures the essential physics of drop dynamics and provides critical design guideline. The work was supported by NSF Engineering Research Center on Structured Organic Particulate Systems.