Preparation and Magnetic Manipulation of Fe3O4/Acrylic Resin Core–Shell Microspheres

• Published in: Langmuir Vol. 39; no. 32; pp. 11459 - 11467
• Main Authors: Zhou, Kejia, Li, Junfu, Li, Wangming, Zhang, Yudong, Wang, Kuangbing, Xiong, Xinyi, Li, Shijiao, Chen, Xiaoyang, Cheng, Hsien-wei, Qiu, Jingjiang, Wei, Ronghan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 15-08-2023
• ISSN: 0743-7463; 1520-5827
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.3c01474

Core–shell microspheres refer to duo-layer or multilayer microspheres, which are widely used in drug delivery, microreactors, etc. Accurate manipulation of microspheres is a research hot spot, while traditional manipulation methods including ultrasonic manipulation and laser manipulation still face some limitations. In this study, magnetic core–shell microspheres were adopted to realize the accurate manipulation of microspheres. Combined with microfluidic technology, polystyrene sulfonic acid (PSSA)/Fe3O4 magnetic fluid was utilized as the core material and photosensitive acrylic resin became the shell material. After UV curing, a magnetic core–shell microsphere with an average size of 55 μm could be achieved, and the diameter was uniform and controllable. By adjusting the flow rate of the dispersed phase, the dual-core microspheres with different core particle sizes that ranged from 9.3 to 28.4 μm could be prepared. Experimental results showed that the prepared Fe3O4/acrylic resin core–shell microspheres can be used as functionalized microspheres that have good magnetic response properties and self-assembly ability. In addition, the magnetic manipulation and self-assembly of the prepared core–shell microspheres were presented with different external magnetic fields. The magnetic core–shell microspheres have shown great potential in the fields of biomedical engineering and targeted delivery of drugs.