Honey, I shrunk the bubbles: microfluidic vacuum shrinkage of lipid-stabilized microbubbles
Autor: | Michael C. Kolios, Jennifer Kieda, Vaskar Gnyawali, Raffi Karshafian, Scott S. H. Tsai, Byeong-Ui Moon |
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Rok vydání: | 2023 |
Předmět: |
Materials science
business.industry Vacuum pressure 010401 analytical chemistry Microfluidics Ultrasound Nanotechnology Single parameter 02 engineering and technology General Chemistry 021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology Condensed Matter Physics 01 natural sciences 0104 chemical sciences Ultrasound imaging Microbubbles 0210 nano-technology business Biomedical engineering Shrinkage |
Popis: | We present a microfluidic technique that shrinks lipidstabilized microbubbles from O(100) to O(1) µm in diameter–the size that is desirable in applications as ultrasound contrast agents. We achieve microbubble shrinkage by utilizing vacuum channels that are adjacent to the microfluidic flow channels to extract air from the microbubbles. We tune a single parameter, the vacuum pressure, to accurately control the final microbubble size. Finally, we demonstrate that the resulting O(1) µm diameter microbubbles have similar stability to microfluidics generated microbubbles that are not exposed to vacuum shrinkage. We anticipate that, with additional scale-up, this simple approach to shrink microbubbles generated microfluidically will be desirable in ultrasound imaging and therapeutics applications. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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