Microfluidic fabrication of stable gas-filled microcapsules for acoustic contrast enhancement.

Langmuir

School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Department of Physics, Harvard University, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States.

Published: October 2013

AI Article Synopsis

  • A new method for creating gas-filled microcapsules that can handle high pressures has been developed using microfluidics.
  • These microcapsules start as water-filled and can be triggered to turn into gas-filled ones, enhancing their visibility in imaging applications.
  • The solid polymer shell of these capsules makes them stronger against pressure, promising better performance in imaging challenging environments like oil reservoirs.

Article Abstract

We introduce a facile approach for the production of gas-filled microcapsules designed to withstand high pressures. We exploit microfluidics to fabricate water-filled microcapsules that are then externally triggered to become gas-filled, thus making them more echogenic. In addition, the gas-filled microcapsules have a solid polymer shell making them resistant to pressure-induced buckling, which makes them more mechanically robust than traditional prestabilized microbubbles; this should increase the potential of their utility for acoustic imaging of porous media with high hydrostatic pressures such as oil reservoirs.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/la402598pDOI Listing

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