A deeper understanding of the key processes that determine
the
particle morphologies generated during aerosol droplet drying is highly
desirable for spray-drying of powdered pharmaceuticals and foods,
predicting the properties of atmospheric particles, and monitoring
disease transmission. Particle morphologies are affected by the drying
kinetics of the evaporating droplets, which are in turn influenced
by the composition of the initial droplet as well as the drying conditions.
Herein, we use polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) to prepare
three types of sterically stabilized diblock copolymer nanoparticles
comprising the same steric stabilizer block and differing core blocks
with z-average diameters ranging from 32 to 238 nm.
These well-defined nanoparticles enable a systematic investigation
of the effect of the nanoparticle size and composition on the drying
kinetics of aqueous aerosol droplets (20–28 μm radius)
and the final morphology of the resulting microparticles. A comparative
kinetics electrodynamic balance was used to obtain evaporation profiles
for 10 examples of nanoparticles at a relative humidity (RH) of 0,
45, or 65%. Nanoparticles comprising the same core block with mean
diameters of 32, 79, and 214 nm were used to produce microparticles,
which were dried under different RH conditions in a falling droplet
column. Scanning electron microscopy was used to examine how the drying
kinetics influenced the final microparticle morphology. For dilute
droplets, the chemical composition of the nanoparticles had no effect
on the evaporation rate. However, employing smaller nanoparticles
led to the formation of dried microparticles with a greater degree
of buckling.