Thiol click chemistry has emerged as a prominent synthetic chemistry tool in recent years. The value of click chemistry reactions, which occur by the binding of a sulfhydryl group to an alkene or an alkyne and proceed via photoinitiation, is evident by their use in a wide variety of research applications including hydrogel drug delivery, dendrimer synthesis and electroluminescent films. Using microfluidics, we recently demonstrated the ability to fabricate thiol�ene and thiol�yne microfibers from a variety of reagent components. A microfluidic channel with grooves in the top and bottom provided a mechanism to fabricate fibers with predetermined cross-sectional shapes (e.g. round, ribbon-shaped, double anchor), while also controlling fiber size on the sub-micron level. In addition to the control over fiber shapes and sizes, we have performed surface chemistry on stoichiometrically imbalanced microfibers, attaching a fluorescent probe to the surface of the fibers via a biotin-streptavidin linkage. Recently, we extended this work by successfully incorporating gold and silver nanoparticles into thiol�ene and thiol�yne microfibers, which altered their materials properties. The work presented covers several research areas including polymer chemistry, polymer engineering and surface chemistry. The ability not only to fabricate thiol click microfibers, but also to control their size, shape, internal components and subject them to post-polymerization modifications should lead to new smart materials for filtration, optics, sensing and textile applications.

Microfluidic fabrication and modification of thiol click polymer fibers

246th National Meeting (2013)

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