Electrokinetic Transport of Silica Nanoparticles in a Biomimetic Porous Medium
Date
2024-04-18
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Colloidal particles can be manipulated under an applied external field, one of which is an electric field, to transport them to their desired location. The movement of charged particles or fluids due to an applied electric field is known as electrokinetics. This has widely been used in drug delivery and electrokinetic soil remediation. This phenomenon allows for an easy way to manipulate charged particles. Previous work investigating the application of drug delivery has focused on porous mediums that is homogeneous and physiochemically different from that found in tissues. The electrokinetic and hydrodynamic transport of nanoparticles in biomimetic porous medium has not been studied extensively. In this work, we have incorporated Gelatin methacrylamide (GelMA) hydrogel in a microfluidic chip to explore the transport of silica nanoparticles through the hydrogel. To accomplish this, we studied the transport of silica nanoparticles at varying crosslinker concentration, pressure driven flow and electric field intensity. Our results indicate that by increasing the crosslinker concentration, the pore size gets smaller and the nanoparticle transport is more constrained. Increasing the flow rate increases the distance that the nanoparticles can travel while also increasing the number of aggregates formed. We also explore the transport of silica nanoparticles at varying electric field strengths. We observed that increasing the electric field strength increases the distance travelled by the nanoparticles through the hydrogel and reduces the number of aggregates formed which benefits the transport of the nanoparticle. The experimental results in this thesis open up routes for electrokinetic drug delivery through heterogeneous porous media, and allow for further investigation of the effect of electric fields and more directed drug delivery.
Description
Keywords
Microfluidics, Phoretic phenomena, Colloidal particles, Fluid mechanics, Porous media, Hydrogel, Electric field
Citation
Sreeram, P. (2024). Electrokinetic transport of silica nanoparticles in a biomimetic porous medium (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.