Fabrication and Scalable Production of Nanobottles

纳米瓶的制造和规模化生产

• 批准号: 2137669
• 负责人: Younan Xia
• 金额: $ 39.15万
• 依托单位: Georgia Tech Research Corporation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-12-01 至 2024-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2137669&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Fabrication; Scalable; Production; Nanobottles

This grant supports research that will create new knowledge related to the manufacturing of nanobottles made of diverse materials, together with controllable dimensions, shapes, and opening sizes. Macroscopic bottles are ubiquitous in our everyday life. The unique design of a bottle offers immediate advantages in terms of easiness and convenience for packaging, storage, and transportation. While there are mature technologies for manufacturing macroscopic bottles made of glasses, metals, and polymers on an industrial scale, it is impossible to apply the same technology to the fabrication of nanoscopic (or even microscopic) bottles due to lack of tools capable of handling such minuscule structures. This grant supports fundamental research to provide needed knowledge for the development of a precise and robust method for fabricating nanobottles and the results from this research will benefit the U.S. economy and society. The nanobottles are increasingly preferred for applications involving encapsulation, controlled release, and drug delivery, with immediate impacts on biomedicine and healthcare. They are also expected to enable the encapsulation and controlled release of chemical substances essential to environmental remediation and agriculture. The multi-disciplinary and collaborative nature will help broaden participation of underrepresented groups in research, offering a vehicle to enrich the education and training experiences of participating students. The results from this research will be further adapted to enhance classroom teaching, including the development of demonstrations, e.g. animations and experiments, related to the key concepts of materials science and biomedical engineering.This research will focus on nanobottles in the form of colloidal hollow particles of 50−500 nm in diameter, together with a single hole in the otherwise impermeable wall. By coating the surface of a colloidal template with a different material and then selectively etching away the template, one can obtain a hollow particle with its size and shape precisely defined by the template. This method has been successfully applied to a variety of materials, but there is no reliable strategy for generating a well-controlled hole in the wall of the hollow particle. This research is to fill the knowledge gap on the mechanism(s) of hole creation by swelling the shell-coated template with a solvent. When the swelling-induced pressure reaches a critical level, it will spontaneously poke a hole in the shell to release the pressure and allow the swollen template to escape through the opening. This fabrication method can be applied to essentially all types of materials, including ceramics, metals, and polymers, as long as they can be coated on the colloidal templates as uniform shells. Both the coating and swelling processes will be experimentally investigated and theoretically modeled to establish a mechanistic understanding and insightful guidance necessary for the future manufacturing of nanobottles. In a proof-of-concept demonstration, the nanobottles will be evaluated for the encapsulation and then controlled release of a therapeutic agent for the eradication of cancer cells.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这笔赠款支持的研究将创造与由不同材料制成的纳米瓶制造相关的新知识，以及可控的尺寸、形状和开口尺寸。宏观瓶子在我们的日常生活中无处不在，瓶子的独特设计提供了直接的优势。虽然在工业规模上制造由玻璃、金属和聚合物制成的宏观瓶子的技术已经成熟，但不可能将相同的技术应用于纳米级的制造。由于缺乏能够处理这种微小结构的工具，这项拨款支持基础研究，为开发精确而稳健的纳米瓶制造方法提供所需的知识，这项研究的结果将有利于美国经济。纳米瓶越来越多地用于封装、控制释放和涉及药物输送的应用，对生物医学和医疗保健产生直接影响，它们还有望实现对环境修复至关重要的化学物质的封装和控制释放。多学科和协作性质将有助于扩大代表性不足的群体对研究的参与，为丰富参与学生的教育和培训经验提供工具。这项研究的结果将进一步适应于加强课堂教学，包括与材料科学和生物医学工程的关键概念相关的演示，例如动画和实验。这项研究将重点关注直径为 50−500 nm 的胶体空心颗粒形式的纳米瓶，以及通过在胶体模板的表面涂上不同的材料，然后选择性地蚀刻掉模板，可以获得其尺寸和形状由模板精确限定的空心颗粒。材料，但没有可靠的策略来在中空颗粒的壁上产生良好控制的孔，这项研究是通过用壳涂层模板膨胀来填补孔形成机制的知识空白。当溶胀引起的压力达到时。当达到临界水平时，它会自发地在外壳上戳一个洞以释放压力，并允许膨胀的模板通过开口逸出。这种制造方法基本上可以应用于所有类型的材料，包括陶瓷、金属和聚合物。只要它们可以作为均匀的壳涂覆在胶体模板上，就可以对涂覆和膨胀过程进行实验研究和理论建模，以建立未来纳米瓶制造所需的机械理解和富有洞察力的指导。在概念验证演示中，将对纳米瓶的封装进行评估，然后控制释放治疗剂以消灭癌细胞。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识产权进行评估，被认为值得支持优点和更广泛的影响审查标准。

项目成果

Template‐Directed Synthesis of Colloidal Hollow Particles: Mind the Material Used for the Template

模板——胶体空心粒子的定向合成：注意模板所用的材料

• DOI: 10.1002/smll.202204278
• 发表时间: 2022-09
• 期刊: Small
• 影响因子: 13.3
• 作者: Qiu, Jichuan;Shang, Yuxin;Xu, Jianchang;Xia, Younan
• 通讯作者: Xia, Younan

Polystyrene‐Silica Colloidal Janus Particles with Uniform Shapes and Complex Structures

形状均匀、结构复杂的聚苯乙烯-二氧化硅胶体Janus颗粒

• DOI: 10.1002/ppsc.202200085
• 发表时间: 2022-06-13
• 期刊: Particle & Particle Systems Characterization
• 影响因子: 2.7
• 作者: Jianchang Xu;Jichuan Qiu;Haohui Zhang;Yuhang Hu;Younan Xia
• 通讯作者: Younan Xia