Institut Charles Sadron Event

Polymeric nanoparticles (PNPs) can be designed for a wide range of applications in fields such as nanomedicine, cosmetics, or agriculture. These fields are rapidly growing, requesting novel approaches such as rapid, continuous, biocompatible, and eco-friendly processes to improve PNPs’ production. However, some one-step processes are impeded by the poor control on PNPs’ properties induced by the mechanism of formation via conventional devices. Majority of these devices use batch operations, or include chemically reactive and aggressive materials, that are highly avoided in most PNP’s applications. In this research, PNPs were fabricated in three different emulsion-based methods, and one novel non-emulsion-based method. In all the methods, pre-formed polymers and highly biocompatible materials were used. Firstly, single poly(lactic-co-glycolic-acid) nanoparticles which diameters ranged from 60 nm to 100 nm were achieved, then blend and anisotropic PNPs with poly(methyl-methacrylate) and poly(styrene-sulfonate) were developed and assessed in drug delivery. Additionally, a side-by-side capillary setup was developed as a novel one-step continuous flow device that allowed the production of different polyelectrolyte complex nanoparticles with monomodal diameters ranging from 40 nm to 120 nm. This process was optimized to allow controlling PNP’s size and size distribution. Keywords: one-step production, polymeric nanoparticle, emulsification, microfluidics, elongational-flow, micromixer, anisotropy, polyelectrolyte, side-by-side capillary