Experimental and numerical studies on microfluidic preparation and engineering of chitosan nanoparticles

Optimization of nanoparticle (NP) characteristics (e.g. size, shape, zeta potential, etc.) is essential to achieve desirable cell responses. In the current study, we intend to introduce an equation representing a prediction about hydrodynamic diameter of microfluidic (MF) preparation of chitosan-tripolyphosphate (CS-TPP) NPs as an influential factor on cell behavior. Both numerical simulation and experimental study have been employed for this study. TPP concentration, channel length and flow ratio (lateral flow to core flow) to find optimum mixing efficiency conditions using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in COMSOL 5.5 in a t-shaped MFD were evaluated numerically and consequently in experimental section, a cross-junction MFD was used for preparation of CS-TPP NPs based on optimum conditions obtained from numerical section to find a correlation between NPs hydrodynamic diameter, flow ratios and TPP concentrations.