Microfluidic vs. batch synthesis of fluorescent poly(GMA-co-EGDMA) micro/nanoparticles for biomedical applications

Fluorescent particles play a crucial role in nanomedicine and biological applications such as imaging, diagnostic tools, drug delivery, biosensing, multimodal imaging, and theranostics. This report presents a novel synthesis method and comparative study for synthesizing fluorescent particles in microfluidic continuous and batch-type reactors. Glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) and ethylene glycol dimethyl acrylate (EGDMA) are well-known monomers for synthesizing functional particles for biomedical applications. Several methods exist to obtain fluorescent poly(GMA-co-EGDMA) (p(GMA-EGDMA))particles through various polymerization techniques. Unlike existing methods, we developed a green approach for synthesizing fluorescent p(GMA-EGDMA) particles via UV-initiated one-step emulsion polymerization by comparing microfluidic and batch synthesis. Moreover, as a fluorescent dye, fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) was directly incorporated with p(GMA-EGDMA) particles at various concentrations to achieve tunable fluorescent functionality. While the batch synthesis resulted in polydisperse fluorescent p(GMA-EGDMA)microparticles with spherical shapes ranging from 25 μm to 1.0 μm in size, the microfluidic synthesis produced nonspherical nanoparticles. Fluorescent FITC@p(GMA-EGDMA) particles were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM), fluorescent microscope, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The synthesized particles have potential for fluorescence imaging applications, specifically bio-detection in array systems.