Do you want to publish a course? Click here

Controlled Nanoparticle Formation by Diffusion Limited Coalescence

131   0   0.0 ( 0 )
 Added by Remco Tuinier
 Publication date 2012
  fields Physics
and research's language is English




Ask ChatGPT about the research

Polymeric nanoparticles (NPs) have a great application potential in science and technology. Their functionality strongly depends on their size. We present a theory for the size of NPs formed by precipitation of polymers into a bad solvent in the presence of a stabilizing surfactant. The analytical theory is based upon diffusion-limited coalescence kinetics of the polymers. Two relevant time scales, a mixing and a coalescence time, are identified and their ratio is shown to determine the final NP diameter. The size is found to scale in a universal manner and is predominantly sensitive to the mixing time and the polymer concentration if the surfactant concentration is sufficiently high. The model predictions are in good agreement with experimental data. Hence the theory provides a solid framework for tailoring nanoparticles with a priori determined size.



rate research

Read More

The capture and translocation of biomolecules through nanometer-scale pores are processes with a potential large number of applications, and hence they have been intensively studied in the recent years. The aim of this paper is to review existing models of the capture process by a nanopore, together with some recent experimental data of short single- and double-stranded DNA captured by Cytolysin A (ClyA) nanopore. ClyA is a transmembrane protein of bacterial origin which has been recently engineered through site-specific mutations, to allow the translocation of double- and single-stranded DNA. A comparison between theoretical estimations and experiments suggests that for both cases the capture is a reaction-limited process. This is corroborated by the observed salt dependence of the capture rate, which we find to be in quantitative agreement with the theoretical predictions.
Solvent exchange is a simple method to produce surface nanodroplets on a substrate for a wide range of applications by displacing a solution of good solvent, poor solvent and oil (Solution A) by a poor solvent (Solution B). In this work, we show that the growth and coalescence of nanodroplets on a homogeneous surface is mediated by the viscosity of the solvent. We show that at high flow rates of viscous Solution B, the final droplet volume deviates from the scaling law that correlates final droplet volume to the flow rate of non-viscous Solution B, reported in previous work. We attribute this deviation to a two-regime growth in viscous Solution B, where transition from an initial, fast regime to a final slow regime influenced by the flow rate. Moreover, viscous solution B hinders the coalescence of growing droplets, leading to a distinct bimodal distribution of droplet size with stable nanodroplets, in contrast to a continuous size distribution of droplets in non-viscous case. We demonstrate that the group of small droplets produced in high viscosity environment may be applied for enhanced fluorescence detection with higher sensitivity and shorter response time. The finding of this work can potentially be applied for mediating the size distribution of surface nanodroplets on homogeneous surface without templates.
109 - A. Sozza , F. Piazza , M. Cencini 2017
We present an efficient point-particle approach to simulate reaction-diffusion processes of spherical absorbing particles in the diffusion-limited regime, as simple models of cellular uptake. The exact solution for a single absorber is used to calibrate the method, linking the numerical parameters to the physical particle radius and uptake rate. We study configurations of multiple absorbers of increasing complexity to examine the performance of the method, by comparing our simulations with available exact analytical or numerical results. We demonstrate the potentiality of the method in resolving the complex diffusive interactions, here quantified by the Sherwood number, measuring the uptake rate in terms of that of isolated absorbers. We implement the method in a pseudo-spectral solver that can be generalized to include fluid motion and fluid-particle interactions. As a test case of the presence of a flow, we consider the uptake rate by a particle in a linear shear flow. Overall, our method represents a powerful and flexible computational tool that can be employed to investigate many complex situations in biology, chemistry and related sciences.
We develop a description of diffusion limited growth in solid-solid transformations, which are strongly influenced by elastic effects. Density differences and structural transformations provoke stresses at interfaces, which affect the phase equilibrium conditions. We formulate equations for the interface kinetics similar to dendritic growth and study the growth of a stable phase from a metastable solid in both a channel geometry and in free space. We perform sharp interface calculations based on Greens function methods and phase field simulations, supplemented by analytical investigations. For pure dilatational transformations we find a single growing finger with symmetry breaking at higher driving forces, whereas for shear transformations the emergence of twin structures can be favorable. We predict the steady state shapes and propagation velocities, which can be higher than in conventional dendritic growth.
In this work, we present a mathematical model to describe the adsorption-diffusion process on fractal porous materials. This model is based on the fractal continuum approach and considers the scale-invariant properties of the surface and volume of adsorbent particles, which are well-represented by their fractal dimensions. The method of lines was used to solve the nonlinear fractal model, and the numerical predictions were compared with experimental data to determine the fractal dimensions through an optimization algorithm. The intraparticle mass flux and the mean square displacement dynamics as a function of fractal dimensions were analyzed. The results suggest that they can be potentially used to characterize the intraparticle mass transport processes. The fractal model demonstrated to be able to predict adsorption-diffusion experiments and jointly can be used to estimate fractal parameters of porous adsorbents.
comments
Fetching comments Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
mircosoft-partner

هل ترغب بارسال اشعارات عن اخر التحديثات في شمرا-اكاديميا