Production of Polymer Nanoparticles by Solvent Displacement Using Intensive Mixers

2 Production of Polymer Nanoparticles by Solvent Displacement Using Intensive Mixers 

The flash precipitation process, as stated before, was first employed for the production of poly(D,L-lactide) nanoparticles by Fessi et al. [41]. Polymer and drug were dissolved in an organic water-miscible solvent (acetone, tetrahydrofuran) and then the solution was infused into a large volume of water, where the solvent was dispersed quickly into the aqueous phase and stable nanoparticles were formed. As mentioned in the introduction, this process will be described in detail in this section, and in particular the interaction between the particle formation process and hydrodynamics will be discussed as the mixing efficiency is important, nanoparticles production by solvent displacement is often carried out in intensive mixers. 

the simple Tee mixer has been proposed and successfully employed for polymer nanoparticles production [71], 

Shen et al. [50] carried out a detailed investigation in the MIV mixer, studying the incorporation of (5-carotene and polyethyleneimine (PEI) selected as model drug and cationic macromolecule various copolymers in different physical states were selected an amorphous one, poly(ethylene oxide)-l -poly(styrene) (PEO-b-PS), a semicrystalline one, poly(ethylene oxide)-b-poly(e-caprolactone) (PEG-fc-PCL), and an ionic copolymer, poly(ethylene oxide)-b-poly(acrylic acid) (PEG-b-PAA) this also allowed the investigation of the influence of the type of interaction forces, in addition to hydrodynamics and supersaturation rate. 

Comparison between performances of MIV and CIJ mixers have also been published [67], as have been modeling studies of polymer self-assembling [52]. 

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