Effect of the Addition of Diblock Copolymer Nanoparticles on the Evaporation Kinetics and Final Particle Morphology for Drying Aqueous Aerosol Droplets

Barnaby E A Miles, Derek H.H. Chan, Spyridon Varlas, Lukesh Kumar Mahato, Justice Archer, Rachael E H Miles, Steven P. Armes*, Jonathan P Reid*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)734–743
Number of pages10
JournalLangmuir
Volume40
Issue number1
Early online date21 Dec 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 9 Jan 2024

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
B.E.A.M., L.K.M., J.A., R.E.H.M., and J.P.R. acknowledge financial support from EPSRC (no. EP/W022206/1). D.H.H.C., S.V., and S.P.A. also acknowledge financial support from EPSRC (no. EP/W022214/1). B.E.A.M. acknowledges financial support from the EPSRC CDT in aerosol science (no. EP/S023593/1). The authors acknowledge financial support from Future Formulation (no. EP/N025245/1).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.

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