Controlling the vaterite CaCO3 crystal pores. Design of tailor-made polymer based microcapsules by hard templating

Feoktistova, N., Rose, J., Prokopović, V.Z., Vikulina, A.S. ORCID: 0000-0001-9427-2055, Skirtach, A. and Volodkin, D. ORCID: 0000-0001-7474-5329, 2016. Controlling the vaterite CaCO3 crystal pores. Design of tailor-made polymer based microcapsules by hard templating. Langmuir, 32 (17), pp. 4229-4238. ISSN 0743-7463

Preview

Text 9265_Volodkin.pdf - Published version Download (8MB) | Preview

Abstract

The spherical vaterite CaCO3 microcrystals are nowadays widely used as sacrificial templates for fabrication of various microcarriers made of biopolymers (e.g., proteins, nucleic acids, enzymes) due to porous structure and mild template elimination conditions. Here, we demonstrated for the first time that polymer microcarriers with tuned internal nanoarchitecture can be designed by employing the CaCO3 crystals of controlled porosity. The layer-by-layer deposition has been utilized to assemble shell-like (hollow) and matrix-like (filled) polymer capsules due to restricted and free polymer diffusion through the crystal pores, respectively. The crystal pore size in the range of few tens of nanometers can be adjusted without any additives by variation of the crystal preparation temperature in the range 7−45 °C. The temperature-mediated growth mechanism is explained by the Ostwald ripening of nanocrystallites forming the crystal secondary structure. Various techniques including SEM, AFM, CLSM, Raman microscopy, nitrogen adsorption−desorption, and XRD have been employed for crystal and microcapsule analysis. A three-dimensional model is introduced to describe the crystal internal structure and predict the pore cutoff and available surface for the pore diffusing molecules. Inherent biocompatibility of CaCO3 and a possibility to scale the porosity in the size range of typical biomacromolecules make the CaCO3 crystals extremely attractive tools for template assisted designing tailor-made biopolymer-based architectures in 2D to 3D targeted at drug delivery and other bioapplications.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Langmuir
Creators:	Feoktistova, N., Rose, J., Prokopović, V.Z., Vikulina, A.S., Skirtach, A. and Volodkin, D.
Publisher:	American Chemical Society
Date:	3 May 2016
Volume:	32
Number:	17
ISSN:	0743-7463
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1021/acs.langmuir.6b00717 DOI
Divisions:	Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	10 Oct 2017 12:32
Last Modified:	30 Jul 2019 14:43
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/31811

Actions (login required)

Edit View

Views

Downloads