Fabrication of Spherical Colloidal Supraparticles via Membrane Emulsification

This is the raw data for the manuscript "Fabrication of Spherical Colloidal Supraparticles via Membrane Emulsification".

Abstract

Colloidal supraparticles are micron-assemblies of primary particles. These supraparticles have potential application in photonic materials, catalysis, gas adsorption and drug delivery. Thus, synthesis of colloidal supraparticles with a narrow size distribution and high yield has become essential for their application in different fields of science and technology. Here, we demonstrate membrane emulsification as a high-throughput approach for fabricating spherical supraparticles with narrow size distribution and control over particle size and crystallinity. Spherical supraparticles with well-ordered surface structures are synthesized by generating emulsion droplets of an aqueous colloidal dispersion in fluorocarbon oil using a Shirasu Porous Glass membrane, followed by the consolidation of particles through water removal within the emulsion. We systematically investigate process parameters, including the flow rate of particle dispersion, particle concentration, and average pore diameter of the membrane on the mean size and size distribution of the supraparticles, revealing key factors governing supraparticle properties and production throughput. Comparative evaluation with commonly employed methods highlights the advantage of membrane emulsification, which combines well-defined internal structure and controlled supraparticle sizes with comparably high yields in the order of tens of grams per day.  Importantly, in contrast to widely-used droplet-based microfluidics, membrane emulsification allows fabrication of supraparticles in non-fluorinated oil. Overall, membrane emulsification offers a simple yet versatile method for fabricating colloidal supraparticles with high quality and yield and may serve as a bridge between existing high-precision techniques such as droplet-based microfluidics and high-throughput processes with less control such as spray drying

All data are sorted according to thier appearance in the figures of the main manuscript and the supporting infomation. All the plots data are stored as .xlsx format and content of the column can be found in the headlines, while data shown in the figures is marked in yellow. All the optical microscopy images are stored in .tif format and the file name includes scale bar value. 

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