Synthesis of twin alginate microparticles via microfluidic emulsification and sorting

Based on the microfluidic emulsification process, the regular and stable formation of parent and satellite droplets can be achieved. The purpose of this study is to accurately separate the satellite (smaller) droplets from their parent (larger) droplets to obtain twin monodispersed microparticles by a bi-T-junction hybrid microchannels design controlling both emulsification and separation. Results show that both of the collected larger and smaller droplets are highly monodispersed (RSD Lt 2% and 6%, respectively), and featured with high reproducibility as well. This microfluidic device was also employed to present a facile one-step synthetic approach for the preparation of twin monodispersed alginate microparticles The proposed microfluidic chip is capable of generating relatively uniform twin microparticles with well controllable sizes, and it has the characteristics of a simple, low cost, and high throughput process. In the future this apparatus can be further applied to manufacture various twin monodispersed composite micro-vehicles to act as a smart drug delivery system.