Microfluidics for silica biomaterials synthesis: opportunities and challenges

Abstract

A comprehensive overview of microfluidics-enabled controllable synthesis and emerging bioapplications of silica micro-/nanomaterials.

Chips for Biomaterials and Biomaterials for Chips: Recent Advances at the Interface between Microfabrication and Biomaterials Research

“…A wide range of substances have been used to produce nanoparticles for these applications, including a range of polymers, [94][95][96] multimetallic alloys, [97] ceramics, such as hydroxyapatite, [98] and silica. [99] The potential for extremely rapid mixing of reagents within a microfluidic device has also been exploited for the controlled production of nanoparticles with more complex structure, including core-shell nanocomposites [100] and hollow particles. [101] Nanoparticles produced or modified using microfluidics have a range of applications, including drug delivery, [67] gene delivery, [95] and imaging-assisted cancer therapy.…”

Microfluidics for ZnO micro-/nanomaterials development: rational design, controllable synthesis, and on-chip bioapplications

“…[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] Therefore, microreactors have been widely employed for controllable synthesis of polymers, [21][22][23][24][25][26][27] gold, 28,29 quantum dots, 30,31 magnetic materials, 32 and silica materials. 33 Similarly, from the downstream application point of view, microfluidics-based microchips could provide many superior benefits over conventional batch approaches, such as high sensitivity and specificity, rapid response time, simple sample pretreatment, and low sample consumption. These features endow microchips with promising potential applications in sensing, 34,35 catalysis, 28,36 nanomedicine, 25 drug delivery, [37][38][39][40] tissue engineering, 24 and many other biomedical fields.…”

“…Since the typical values of U, L, and D in microchannels are ∼1 m s −1 , 10 −6 -10 −4 m, and 10 −10 -10 −11 m 2 s −1 , respectively, the Pe of microfluidic devices is thus relatively large enough to neglect the diffusion-limited mixing. 33 To improve the mixing performance of reactants for ZnO production, one common strategy is to increase the length of microchannels (such as winding or serpentine form). Given the homogeneous reaction environment from microfluidics, the production efficiency and working performance of the resultant materials are generally higher than those from conventional batch reactors.…”

Synthesis and Surface Engineering of Inorganic Nanomaterials Based on Microfluidic Technology

“…Due to the multiple characteristics and advantages of microfluidic technology as mentioned above, it has been widely used for the synthesis and surface modification of inorganic nanomaterials, such as silica nanoparticles [ 19 ], metal and metal/metal composite nanoparticles [ 20 ], quantum dots (QDs) [ 21 ], and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) [ 22 ]. Additionally, the particle size, size distribution, and surface morphology/functionality of nanomaterials can be well controlled, and the batch-to-batch reproducibility can be further improved.…”