Synthesis and characterization of hollow microcapsules from bio-inspired crosslinkablepolymers

3^rd International Conference and Exhibition on Materials Science & Engineering

October 06-08, 2014 Hilton San Antonio Airport, USA

D M Martino, R E Giménez, R M S Alvarez, F E Morán Vieyra and C D Borsarelli

Accepted Abstracts: Material Sci Eng

Abstract :

Highly uniform CaCO3 microparticles were synthesized by two different methods to develop a cheaper procedure with greater control of the experimental variables. Co-polyelectrolites containing vinylbencyl thymine (VBT) and either vinylbenzyltriethylammonium chloride (VBA) or vinylphenylsulphonate (VPS) were used to form hollow microcapsules (MCs) via layer by layer (LbL) sequential adsorption on CaCO3. The CaCO3 sacrificial templates were removed later with EDTA solutions. CaCO3 filled and hollow microcapsules were obtained after deposition of 3 alternated polyelectrolyte layers. Fluorescein dye was used for the FM visualization of the MCs, which were ~4.5 μm of average diameter. The removal of CaCO3 by EDTA was monitored by Raman Spectroscopy (RS). The microparticles and microcapsules were characterized by Fluorescence Microscopy (FM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). The effect on the microcapsules of the cyclobutane thymine dimmers formation upon UV irradiation (254 nm) was characterized by FM, SEM, AFM, and RS. The photo-crosslinking was monitored by RS through the formation of thymine dimmers, and observed by AFM and SEM. After UV irradiation the multilayer surface becomes rugged, suggesting that photo-curing of the shell controls the MCs morphology. These DNA-inspired copolyelectrolytes are promising materials for the development of LbL hollow microcapsules with several potential applications such as the stimuli or time controlled release of drugs and agrochemicals, enzyme occlusion, fabrication of enzymatic microreactors, etc.

Biography :

D M Martino received her MSc and PhD in Physics from the University of Rosario, Argentina. She was a postdoctoral associate at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and later appointed as research scientist at the Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory at MIT. She is currently a senior scientist at CONICET Argentina. She has published more than 50 papers in reputed journals; she is/was advisor of undergraduate, graduate and postdocs students, and PI of national and international founded grants. Her research interests include the application of magnetic resonance and optical spectroscopy to study the synthesis, characterization and modeling of new materials, in particular biopolymers.