Microfluidic Fabrication and Applications of Microgels and Hybrid Microgels

Abstract

Smart microgels have gained much attention because of their wide range of applications in the field of biomedical, environmental, nanotechnological and catalysis sciences. Most of the applications of microgels are strongly affected by their morphology, size and size distribution. Various methodologies have been adopted to obtain polymer microgel particles. Droplet microfluidic techniques have been widely reported for the fabrication of highly monodisperse microgel particles to be used for various applications. Monodisperse microgel particles of required size and morphology can be achieved via droplet microfluidic techniques by simple polymerization of monomers in the presence of suitable crosslinker or by gelation of high molecular weight polymers. This report gives recent research progress in fabrication, characterization, properties and applications of microgel particles synthesized by microfluidic methods.

Keywords:

• Applications
• droplet microfluidics
• monodisperse microgel particles
• properties

Acknowledgement

Authors are thankful to The Analytical Chemistry Trust Fund for the financial support under Developing World Scholarship (21/600504/01) at Loughborough University, UK. Ahmad Irfan extend his appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Khalid University (KKU) for funding through research groups program under grant number R.G.P.1/36/43.

Additional information

Funding

Authors are thankful to The Analytical Chemistry Trust Fund for the financial support under Developing World Scholarship (21/600504/01) at Loughborough University, UK. Ahmad Irfan extend his appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Khalid University (KKU) for funding through research groups program under grant number R.G.P.1/36/43.