Publication Date
2016
Journal or Book Title
Science Advances
Abstract
We describe polymer-stabilized droplets capable of recognizing and picking up nanoparticles from substrates in experiments designed for transporting hydroxyapatite nanoparticles that represent the principal elemental composition of bone. Our experiments, which are inspired by cells that carry out materials transport in vivo, used oil-in-water droplets that traverse a nanoparticle-coated substrate driven by an imposed fluid flow. Nanoparticle capture is realized by interaction of the particles with chemical functionality embedded within the polymeric stabilizing layer on the droplets. Nanoparticle uptake efficiency is controlled by solution conditions and the extent of functionality available for contact with the nanoparticles. Moreover, in an elementary demonstration of nanoparticle transportation, particles retrieved initially from the substrate were later deposited “downstream,” illustrating a pickup and drop-off technique that represents a first step toward mimicking point-to-point transportation events conducted in living systems.
DOI
10.1126/sciadv.1601462
Volume
2
Issue
10
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Bai, Ying; Chang, Chia-Chih; Choudhary, Umesh; Bolukbasi, Irem; Crosby, Alfred J.; and Emrick, Todd, "Functional Droplets that Recognize, Collect, and Transport Debris on Surfaces" (2016). Science Advances. 1147.
10.1126/sciadv.1601462