{"id":91503,"date":"2019-06-01T02:22:23","date_gmt":"2019-06-01T09:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/quick-liquid-packaging-encasing-water-silhouettes-in-3d-polymer-membranes-for-lab-in-a-drop-experiments"},"modified":"2019-06-01T02:22:23","modified_gmt":"2019-06-01T09:22:23","slug":"quick-liquid-packaging-encasing-water-silhouettes-in-3d-polymer-membranes-for-lab-in-a-drop-experiments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/quick-liquid-packaging-encasing-water-silhouettes-in-3d-polymer-membranes-for-lab-in-a-drop-experiments","title":{"rendered":"Quick liquid packaging: Encasing water silhouettes in 3D polymer membranes for lab-in-a-drop experiments"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The ability to confine water in an enclosed compartment without directly manipulating it or using rigid containers is an attractive possibility. In a recent study, Sara Coppola and an interdisciplinary research team in the departments of Biomaterials, Intelligent systems, Industrial Production Engineering and Advanced Biomaterials for Healthcare in Italy, proposed a water-based, bottom-up<\/a> approach to encase facile, short-lived water silhouettes in a custom-made adaptive suit.<\/p>\n

In the work, they used a biocompatible polymer<\/a> that could self-assemble with unprecedented degrees of freedom on the water<\/a> surface to produce a thin membrane<\/a>. They custom designed the polymer film as an external container of a liquid core or as a free-standing layer. The scientists characterized the physical properties and morphology of the membrane<\/a> and proposed a variety of applications for the phenomenon from the nanoscale to the macroscale. The process could encapsulate cells or microorganisms successfully without harm, opening the way to a breakthrough approach applicable for organ-on-a-chip<\/a> and lab-in-a-drop<\/a> experiments. The results are now published in Science<\/i> Advances.<\/p>\n

The possibility of isolating, engineering and shaping materials into 2-D or 3D objects from the nanometer to the microscale via bottom-up engineering is gaining importance in materials science<\/a>. Understanding the physics and chemistry of materials will allow a variety of applications in microelectronics<\/a>, drug delivery<\/a>, forensics,<\/a> archeology and paleontology and space research. Materials scientists use a variety of technical methods for microfabrication<\/a> including two-photon polymerization<\/a>, soft interference lithography<\/a>, replica molding and self-folding polymers<\/a> to shape and isolate the material of interest. However, most materials engineering protocols require chemical and physical pretreatments to gain the desired final properties.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Read more<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ability to confine water in an enclosed compartment without directly manipulating it or using rigid containers is an attractive possibility. In a recent study, Sara Coppola and an interdisciplinary research team in the departments of Biomaterials, Intelligent systems, Industrial Production Engineering and Advanced Biomaterials for Healthcare in Italy, proposed a water-based, bottom-up approach to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,38,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-engineering","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}