Description:
Princeton Docket # 15-3152-1
Researchers at Princeton in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering have designed a novel method that allows homogeneous deposition of particles onto absorbing gel substrates.
Current approaches used to deposit on these “soft” substrates often rely on the modification of the liquid phase that contains the particles to be deposited. However, these techniques often lead to non-uniform deposition. The current invention takes advantage of understanding the absorbing properties of the substrate. When a drop containing particles is left on a swelling hydrogel, the solvent is absorbed and particles are homogeneously deposited on the surface of the material due to the homogeneity of the flux of solvent at the surface of the gel.
This invention is simple, versatile and easy to implement and could be used to make homogeneous deposits on any hydrogels, which are able to absorb the drop solvent, and with any kind of particles.
Applications
• Contact lens
• Medical applications such as body implants, plasters
• Biological applications such as cell cultures
Advantages
• Easy to implement
• Cost -effective
• Useful for a variety of hydrogels
• Compatible with a variety of particles
Publications
F. Boulogne, F. Ingremeau, J. Dervaux, L. Limat, H. A. Stone. Homogeneous deposition of particles by absorption on hydrogels. EPL , vol. 112, no. 4, 2015, pp. 48004.
F. Boulogne, F. Ingremeau, L. Limat, H. A. Stone. Tuning the receding contact angle on hydrogels by addition of particles. Langmuir, vol. 32, no. 22, 2016, pp. 5573-5579.
Inventors
Howard A. Stone, Donald R. Dixon and Elizabeth W. Dixon Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Department Chair
Howard Stone is the Donald R. Dixon '69 and Elizabeth W. Dixon Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. His research has been concerned with a variety of fundamental problems in fluid motions dominated by viscosity, so-called low Reynolds number flows, and has frequently featured a combination of theory, computer simulation and modeling, and experiments to provide a quantitative understanding of the flow phenomenon under investigation. Prof. Stone is the recipient of the most prestigious fluid mechanics prize, the Batchelor Prize 2008, for the best research in fluid mechanics in the last ten years. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences.
François Boulogne, Ph.D, received his undergraduate and master's degrees in Physics from Université Paris-Saclay (France). He graduated in 2013 with a Ph.D. in Physics in Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris (France). In 2013, he joined the Complex Fluid group of Prof. Howard Stone at Princeton University as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. François obtained in June 2014 an individual Marie Curie Fellowship to pursue his research in Princeton and in the group of Prof. Laurent Limat at Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes in Université Paris-Diderot. Now, he is a CNRS research assistant at Laboratoire de Physique des Solides in Orsay (France). His research is located at the interface between hydrodynamics with flow of complex fluids such as foams or polymer solutions, physical-chemistry of colloidal suspensions as well as continuum mechanics of consolidating materials.
François Ingremeau, Ph.D, received his master's degree from Université Bordeaux 1 (France) in 2010. He graduated in 2013 with a Ph.D. in Physics from Université Bordeaux 1. He then joined the Complex Fluid Group of Prof. Howard Stone as a postdoctoral Research Associate. He is currently an Assistant Professor at UBO University in Brest (France). He has interest in soft matter physics involving fluids, gels and living systems. His research is dealing with complex fluids with a focus on the relationship between the microstructure of these fluids and their mechanical properties. During his stay in Princeton he was working on biophysics problem involving bacteria and flow and gels as absorbing substrates.
Laurent Limat is a French CNRS Researcher (Directeur de Recherche au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) known for his activity in Wetting and Free surface flows. Now based in the University Paris Diderot since 2007, his team began to develop in Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI, Paris, France) in 1990 (lab. PMMH, Physique et Mécanique des Milieux Hétérogènes). He has published nearly 80 papers on various subjects linked to Complex Flows and Complex Matter: Elasticity of Fractal Curves, Models of Chevrons and Zig-zags in Smectics, Rayleigh-Taylor instability, Liquid columns dynamics in a circular fountain, point singularity formation in dewetting, contact lines on soft gels, colloid deposition at contact lines, impact and stability of viscoelastic jets and viscoelastic curtains, elastowetting, etc. He is now Head of the Lab. Matière et Systèmes Complexes, UMR7057, in University Paris Diderot, since January 2016, and Fellow of APS-DFD since October 2016.
Intellectual Property & Development status
Patent protection is pending.
Princeton is currently seeking commercial partners for the further development and commercialization of this opportunity.
Contact
Michael R. Tyerech
Princeton University Office of Technology Licensing • (609) 258-6762• tyerech@princeton.edu
Sangeeta Bafna
Princeton University Office of Technology Licensing • (609) 258-5579• sbafna@princeton.edu