Title:

Waterborne Multi-lobed Particle Morphology for Directed-Assembly Towards 3D Hierarchical Structures

Particle based building blocks are ubiquitous in applications in material science and biomedical engineering. Our goal is to produce porous 3D scaffolds for tissue engineering through rational design of particles with tunable assembly properties amenable to additive manufacturing techniques. The approach relies on precise control of a non-spherical particle morphology. It is generally challenging to synthesize such particles because surface energy favors spherical shapes to minimize the surface area in contact with the continuous media. Our group previously introduced a conventional, two-stage emulsion polymerization to create multi-lobed composite polymer nanoparticles in 100 nm-200nm size range by restricting the polymer chain diffusion on the seed particles. Here, we targeted significantly larger particles suited for tissue engineering scaffolds. The evolution of the multi-lobed morphology was studied. Additionally, we developed a family of surface functional groups to trigger self-assembly of these particles on demand, ensure robust fixation, and to study the packing geometries that result on clustering. These are critical to the morphology of the pore network in the ultimate 3D scaffold.

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