Browsing by Author "Alizadeh-Haghighi, Elnaz"
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Item Open Access Fabrication of nanowalled catalytically self-threaded supramolecular polyrotaxane microcapsules using droplet microfluidics(American Chemical Society, 2022-04-11) Alizadeh-Haghighi, Elnaz; Khaligh, Aisan; Kalantarifard, Ali; Elbuken, Caglar; Tuncel, DönüsMicrometer-scale monodisperse droplets are produced to generate nanowalled supramolecular microcapsules using microfluidics for high reproducibility and high-throughput manipulation, efficient material consumption, and control over hierarchical structure, shape, and size. In this study, an optimized microfluidic droplet generation technique and a unique liquid-liquid interfacial polymerization method were applied to fabricate the monodisperse polyrotaxane-based supramolecular microcapsules in a fast and simple way. To minimize the uncertainty due to droplet volume variation, the inlet pressures were supplied from the same source while lowering the interfacial tension and the main channel hydrodynamic resistance, which are critical for high monodispersity. The target polyrotaxane network (PN) was simply formed at the interface of the water and oil phases in ultra-monodisperse microdroplets via the cucurbit[6]uril (CB6)-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CB6-AAC) reaction between azido- and alkyne-functionalized tetraphenylporphyrin monomers (TPP-4AZ and TPP-4AL). The thickness of the interfacially assembled PN microcapsules was 20 nm as analyzed by cross-sectional TEM and TEM-EDX techniques. The resultant water-in-oil PN microcapsules were highly monodisperse in size and able to retain target molecules. Here, rhodamine 6G (Rh6G)-loaded PN microcapsules were fabricated, and the release rate of the Rh6G cargo was investigated over time for controlled drug release applications.Item Open Access Membrane-mediated interactions between disk-like inclusions adsorbed on vesicles(Frontiers Media S.A., 2022-10-17) Alizadeh-Haghighi, Elnaz; Karaei Shiraz, Arash; Bahrami, Amir HoushangSelf-assembly of membrane inclusions plays a key role in biological processes such as cellular signalling and trafficking and has potential applications for designing interfacial devices such as sensors and actuators. Despite intensive studies of curvature-mediated interactions, how membrane curvature modulates interactions between flat disk-like inclusions, adsorbed on vesicles, remains unknown. We use Monte Carlo simulations of a triangulated vesicle with simulated annealing to explore curvature-mediated interactions between disk-like rigid inclusions, induced by membrane elastic energy. We distinguish two distinct short and long-range curvature-mediated interactions for disk distances below and above the vesicle diameter. We observe short-range neutral interactions in the limit of small disks, where the vesicle appears as a flat bilayer to the disks. Beyond a certain size of disk-like inclusions, we find a transition from neutral to attractive short-range forces. Consistent with experiments, we also show that upon deflating vesicles, previously-attracted disks experience repulsive interactions. Our findings show how the vesicle curvature and the relative size between the disks and the vesicle determine the character of membrane-mediated interactions between adsorbed disk-like inclusions. Copyright © 2022 Alizadeh-Haghighi, Karaei Shiraz and Bahrami.Item Open Access A microfluidic droplet system for ultra-monodisperse droplet generation: A universal approach(Elsevier Ltd, 2022-07-22) Kalantarifard, Ali; Alizadeh-Haghighi, Elnaz; Elbüken, ÇağlarDespite the importance of droplet monodispersity, a universal methodology for high monodispersity droplet generation does not exist yet. We have recently demonstrated that unlike the conventional method of droplet generation, applying an identical pressure from a single source makes the microfluidic droplet system immune to the external fluctuations that originate from the imperfection of the flow source. In this work, we show that our method is universal and applicable to other common microfluidic devices and flow sources. We applied this method to flow-focusing and coflow devices that are commonly used for high-frequency microdroplet generation. In addition to the pressure pump, we used a syringe pump to show that our method is applicable to flow rate controllable systems as well. We compared the monodispersity of droplets formed by the conventional methods and the novel method explained in this work. © 2022 The Authors