Integrated system to produce nano/microparticles for drug delivery using LTCC microfluidics devices

Abstract

Encapsulated nano/micro particles are highly used for biological, chemical, pharmaceutical and medical applications. The polymeric particles show potential capacity to release drugs and compatibility in biological environments. The emulsion/diffusion process is applied to produce these particles, and technologies based on microfluidic provide miniaturization of such process allowing particles with physical and chemical controlled characteristics. Nevertheless, the integrated system of technological devices like sensors, microactuators and controllers is crucial to improve the performance and efficiency of particles production with automatic cycles. The proposal of this work is to develop the integrated system to produce nano/microparticles for drug encapsulation, using microfluidics devices with control and automatic actions in continuous scale. The system is developed through devices integration, system characterization and control loops, using sensors, pumps, microfluidics devices, communication drivers, data acquisition, and control programs. The result of this work is the integrated system to produce particles of size 499-1500 nm with polydispersity index of 0.3 to 0.5 with potential to be used as drug delivery systems. The experimental results were validated by size measurement and polydispersity distribution with optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and dynamic light scattering.