Elucidating the role of hyaluronic acid in the structure and morphology of calcium oxalate crystals

Recent surge in reports describing new additives that inhibiting the growth and nucleation of calcium oxalate (CaOx), the most common component of renal calculi or kidney stones, have rekindled interest in CaOx crystallization. In this in vitro study, the effect of hyaluronic acid (HA), a protein commonly found in urine, on the morphology and...

Nucleation kinetics of calcium oxalate monohydrate as a function of pH, magnesium, and osteopontin concentration quantified with droplet microfluidics

A droplet-based microfluidic platform is presented to study the nucleation kinetics of calcium oxalate monohydrate (COM), the most common constituent of kidney stones, while carefully monitoring the pseudo-polymorphic transitions. The precipitation kinetics of COM is studied as a function of supersaturation and pH as well as in the presence...

Polymer nano manufacturing of a biomimicking surface for kidney stone crystallization studies

Detected kidney stone cases are increasing globally, yet knowledge on the conditions for stone formation is lacking. Experimental approaches mimicking the micro-environmental conditions present in vivo can help sci-entists untangle intertwined physiochemical and biological phenomena leading to kidney stone formation. As crystal nucleation often...

Selective Crystallization of d-Mannitol Polymorphs Using Surfactant Self-Assembly

Selective crystallization of polymorphs is highly sought after in industrial practice. Yet, state-of-the-art techniques either use laboriously engineered solid surfaces or strenuously prepared heteronucleants. We propose an approach where surfactants in solution self-assemble effortlessly into mesoscopic structures dictating the polymorphic...

Shape anisotropic colloidal particle fabrication using 2-photon polymerization

Hypothesis: Our ability to dictate the colloid geometry is intimately related to self-assembly. The synthesis of anisotropic colloidal particles is currently dominated by wet chemistry and lithographic techniques. The wet chemical synthesis offers limited particle geometries at bulk quantities. Lithographic techniques, on the other hand,...

A Combined Experimental and Modelling Study on Solubility of Calcium Oxalate Monohydrate at Physiologically Relevant pH and Temperatures

Accurate Calcium Oxalate Monohydrate (COM) solubility measurements are essential for elucidating the physiochemical mechanism behind the formation of kidney stones, nephrolithiasis. Yet the reported solubility values of COM in ultrapure water, arguably the simplest solvent relevant for nephrolithiasis, vary significantly depending on implemented...

Universal motion of mirror-symmetric microparticles in confined Stokes flow

Comprehensive understanding of particle motion in microfluidic devices is essential to unlock additional technologies for shape-based separation and sorting of microparticles like microplastics, cells, and crystal polymorphs. Such particles interact hydrodynamically with confining surfaces, thus altering their trajectories. These hydrodynamic...

Analysis of centrifugal homogenization and its applications for emulsification & mechanical cell lysis

We detail the analysis of centrifugal homogenization process by a hydrodynamic model and the model-guided design of a low-cost centrifugal homogenizer. During operation, centrifugal force pushes a multiphase solution to be homogenized through a thin nozzle, consequently homogenizing its contents. We demonstrate and assess the homogenization...

A review on suppression and utilization of the coffee-ring effect

Evaporation of sessile droplets containing non-volatile solutes dispersed in a volatile solvent leaves behind ring-like solid stains. As the volatile species evaporates, pinning of the contact line gives rise to capillary flows that transport non-volatile solutes to the contact line. This phenomenon, called the coffee-ring effect, compromises...

Steering particles by breaking symmetries

We derive general equations of motions for highly-confined particles that perform quasi-two-dimensional motion in Hele-Shaw channels, which we solve analytically, aiming to derive design principles for self-steering particles. Based on symmetry properties of a particle, its equations of motion can be simplified, where we retrieve an earlier...

Calculating the motion of highly confined, arbitrary-shaped particles in Hele–Shaw channels

We combine theory and numerical calculations to accurately predict the motion of anisotropic particles in shallow microfluidic channels, in which the particles are strongly confined in the vertical direction. We formulate an effective quasi-two-dimensional description of the Stokes flow around the particle via the Brinkman equation, which can...

Complex coacervation-based loading and tunable release of a cationic protein from monodisperse glycosaminoglycan microgels

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are of interest for biomedical applications because of their ability to retain proteins (e.g. growth factors) involved in cell-to-cell signaling processes. In this study, the potential of GAG-based microgels for protein delivery and their protein release kinetics upon encapsulation in hydrogel scaffolds were...

Multiparameter Investigation of laser-induced nucleation of supersaturated aqueous KCl solutions

Various mechanisms have been proposed to explain the nonphotochemical laser-induced nucleation (NPLIN). Identifying the dominant mechanism requires addressing a large set of experimental parameters with a statistically significant number of samples, forced by the stochastic nature of nucleation. In this study, with aqueous KCl system, we...

E-MALDI: Optimized conditions during electrowetting-enhanced drop drying for MALDI-MS

We recently showed that electrowetting-enhanced sample preparation for MALDI-MS (eMALDI) can increase the intensity of the MALDI signal by 2-25 times compared to conventional drop drying by concentrating all the dried sample in a single spot rather than leaving behind a heterogeneous coffee stain pattern. Here, we demonstrate that the eMALDI...

Nanoemulsions: Formation, properties and application

Nanoemulsions are kinetically stable liquid-in-liquid dispersions with droplet sizes on the order of 100 nm. Their small size leads to useful properties such as high surface area per unit volume, robust stability, optically transparent appearance, and tunable rheology. Nanoemulsions are finding application in diverse areas such as drug...