One of the most important challenges in encapsulation is to prevent the immediate leakage of the encapsulated species. In this context, our strategy is to develop capsules by polymerizing the water phase of an oil-in-water-in-oil double emulsion. In other terms, our system consists in a direct emulsion of lipophilic species (O1) in a water phase (W) containing monomer, initiator and crosslinker. To obtain the double emulsion, this direct emulsion, stabilized by a hydrophilic surfactant, is itself dispersed in an external oil phase (O2) and stabilized by a lipophilic surfactant. The aim of the project is to polymerize the intermediate water phase to obtain a 3D network. The advantages of this system are that the polymerization will only take place in the water phase thanks to the solubility of the monomer and the obtained 3D network will plays the role of an effective barrier limiting the diffusion of the inner lipophilic specie. First of all, the effect of the polymerizable species on the formulation of the double emulsion has been studied. Some monomers as 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) have surfactant properties and interfere with the formulation. The second step of the project was the study of the polymerization at a specific composition of double emulsion varying the monomer, the amount of initiator and cross-linker. Finally, mechanical properties of the obtained capsules have been evaluated for various polymerization conditions.

Encapsulation and controlled release of reactive lipophilic species thanks to polymerization of double emulsion template

254th National Meeting (2017)

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