Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AutoMonoDroplet (Development of a commercially-viable system for the automatic generation of high-throughput well-defined microdroplets)
Teaser
Emulsions of microdroplets (suspensions of micrometer-sized droplets in an immiscible medium) are used in a wide range of applications especially in pharmaceutical and biosciences, beauty and food industries. Even though the conventional techniques (e.g., high speed blenders...
Summary
Emulsions of microdroplets (suspensions of micrometer-sized droplets in an immiscible medium) are used in a wide range of applications especially in pharmaceutical and biosciences, beauty and food industries. Even though the conventional techniques (e.g., high speed blenders, colloid mills, high pressure homogenizers) can produce emulsions in high quantities and at high rates, these techniques cannot produce monodisperse emulsions. Using conventional techniques, it is difficult to control the size distribution of the resulting droplets, which may affect rate of the droplet degradation, the kinetics of encapsulant release, and decrease the stability of the emulsion. This is particularly problematic in the pharmaceutical industry, where irregular drug quantities encapsulated in polydisperse drug-loaded droplets and particles can cause an initial burst of drug release in vivo, which eventually can lead to undesirable cytotoxic effects.
Fig. 1. Microfluidic chip for monodisperse droplet production.
On the other hand, monodisperse emulsions can be produced, manipulated and analyzed using microfluidics. This technique is employed in chemistry, biology, genomics, proteomics, pharmaceuticals, bio-defense and other areas where small quantities of liquids are involved and rapid analysis is required. The biggest advantages of microfluidics are production of monodisperse droplets and the small quantities of material required, reducing costs of expensive reagents. This is achieved by producing emulsions in micrometer sized channels in a droplet-by-droplet manner at kHz rates (Fig. 1). However, to have very high uniformity of the droplets, flow of the liquids and droplets size has to be monitored and regulated very rapidly, according to changing conditions. This is possible only by fully automated droplet production system, which can monitor droplet size, adjust flow rates and pressures of the liquids to compensate for any changes in the droplet production system and to maintain very high droplet production uniformity for long periods of time at the same time producing high amounts of monodisperse emulsions.
In this project fully automated droplet production system, which can monitor droplet size, adjust flow rates and pressures of the liquids to compensate for any changes in the droplet production system to maintain very high droplet production uniformity for long periods of time was developed (Fig 2).
Fig. 2. The principal scheme of droplet production and monitoring system with the feedback to regulate droplet size.
Work performed
Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far (for final include overview and their exploitation and dissemination)
During this project a lot of work has been done to achieve goals of the project, starting from market research to final device preparation for the market launch. The market research showed, that there is only few competitors in the field and they don’t have any similar solution for the problem. At the same time it was obvious that the market need such a device to stabilize droplets size especially when producing droplets for the long periods of time. Afterwards the droplet detection system together with size measurement system hardware was developed and the control software with the feedback loop was perfected. Thus with all these systems final product was prepared and is ready for the market launch (Fig 3.).
Fig. 3. System for producing highly monodisperse droplets.
Final results
Commercializing this system will greatly benefit scientific in different laboratories (e.g. pharmacy, biology, genetics, chemistry) by simplifying the procedures and removal of the need for tedious manual work of monodisperse emulsions preparation. Thus allowing to achieve better repeatability of the results, analyze emulsions physical and chemical properties more accurately and at the same time decrease the costs on materials used. Industries (e.g. food, pharmaceutical, cosmetics and chemicals) should greatly profit from the simplified monodisperse emulsion preparation protocol and lower their losses by minimizing human factor and having much more reliable results. The new system will also allow minimizing amounts of additives such as emulsifiers, stabilizers and preservatives in the emulsions as the physical properties of monodisperse emulsions can become easier to control and finalized emulsions should have longer shelf life. In the pharmaceutical industry the proposed system will allow to introduce the microfluidics and monodisperse droplets for drug production, encapsulation of drugs. We believe that after 5-10 years the new medicines will be mostly produced using autonomous microfluidics systems, increasing their quality and decreasing side effects.