Functional Particles and Microcapsules

Functional Particles & Microcapsules

Simon Biggs and Alison Tasker

School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia QLD 4072

E-mail: simon.biggs@uq.edu.au

Over the last few within our research group we have developed a number of bespoke microcapsule and particle designs tailored to the characteristics of the material to be encapsulated. In this presentation, examples of core-shell particles for use as semi-permeable and impermeable microcapsules for the encapsulation of large and small molecular weight materials will be discussed.

For semi-permeable capsules, I will show how we can use environment-responsive polymers to manage the permeability of polymer shells built around emulsion droplet precursors. I will also briefly introduce the potential of membrane emulsification techniques to manufacture these capsules on multi-litre scales.

Finally, I will discuss a recently developed method for the preparation of metal-coated emulsion droplets for the long-term retention of small, volatile encapsulated species. I will indicate the key aspects of the synthesis method for such metal shells and demonstrate our ability to control the thickness of the shell deposited on the surface of the droplets and exemplify the release properties of these microcapsules.