Manufacturing Man-Made Magnetosomes: High-Throughput In Situ Synthesis of Biomimetic Magnetite Loaded Nanovesicles.

A new synthetic method for the production of artificial magnetosomes, i.e., lipid-coated vesicles containing magnetic nanoparticles, is demonstrated. Magnetosomes have considerable potential in biomedical and other nanotechnological applications but current production methods rely upon magnetotactic bacteria which limits the range of sizes and shapes that can be generated as well as the obtainable yield. Here, electrohydrodynamic atomization is utilized to form nanoscale liposomes of tunable size followed by electroporation to transport iron into the nanoliposome core resulting in magnetite crystallization. Using a combination of electron and fluorescence microscopy, dynamic light scattering, Raman spectroscopy, and magnetic susceptibility measurements, it is shown that single crystals of single-phase magnetite can be precipitated within each liposome, forming a near-monodisperse population of magnetic nanoparticles. For the specific conditions used in this study the mean particle size is 58 nm (±8 nm) but the system offers a high degree of flexibility in terms of both the size and composition of the final product.

Preparation of porous microsphere-scaffolds by electrohydrodynamic forming and thermally induced phase separation.

The availability of forming technologies able to mass produce porous polymeric microspheres with diameters ranging from 150 to 300 µm is significant for some biomedical applications where tissue augmentation is required. Moreover, appropriate assembly of microspheres into scaffolds is an important challenge to enable direct usage of the as-formed structures in treatments. This work reports the production of poly (glycolic-co-lactic acid) and poly (ε-caprolactone) microspheres under ambient conditions using one-step electrohydrodynamic jetting (traditionally known as atomisation) and thermally induced phase separation (TIPS). To ensure robust production for practical uses, this work presents 12 comprehensive parametric mode mappings of the diameter distribution profiles of the microspheres obtained over a broad range of key processing parameters and correlating of this with the material parameters of 5 different polymer solutions of various concentrations. Poly (glycolic-co-lactic acid) (PLGA) in Dimethyl carbonate (DMC), a low toxicity solvent with moderate conductivity and low dielectric constant, generated microspheres within the targeted diameter range of 150-300 µm. The fabrication of the microspheres suitable for formation of the scaffold structure is achieved by changing the collection method from distilled water to liquid nitrogen and lyophilisation in a freeze dryer.