prepare and study nanogels and looking into their applications as drug delivery systems. This means preparing nanogels (polymerisation), analysis of their structure and study of the drug encapsulation and release properties for particular drugs or model drugs. There are a number of techniques that we use, UV-vis, DLS, NMR, HPLC, etc. Alternatively, we also develop stimuli-responsive hydrogels for anion sensing or drug delivery.
Brief paragraph on why drug delivery is important, why NPs are used for drug delivery (very short)
Definition
Use of nanogels for drug delivery
Nanogels structures, Nanogels properties,
Preparation of nanogels (needs to be long)
Characterisation (e.g. techniques used for the characterisation)
the main aim of your project would be to study the effect of the polymerisation method on nanogels properties. You will compare the properties of nanogels prepared by the method we usually use ‘high dilution radical polymerisation (HDRP)’ to nanogels prepared by ‘emulsion polymerisation’. HDRP is the method I sent you a protocol for, and in literature is also called ‘solution polymerisation’. Thus, if you do a literature search or read reviews or books you should look for ‘solution polymerization’. Other authors, call ‘surfactant-free precipitation polymerisation’ a very similar method but carried out in water. At the link below you can download several articles that I compiled for you, please have a look. One of these articles describes an example of nanogels prepared using the HDRP method (file called ‘HDRP’), there are also a couple examples of papers describing a ‘surfactant free precipitation polymerisation’ and then two reviews describing different methods to prepare nanogels (you can search for other reviews as well).
In your introduction, I would expect that you talk a bit about the most commonly used methods to prepare nanogels and in particular ‘solution polymerisation’, ‘precipitation polymerisation’ and ‘emulsion polymerisation’. As I said, in your project you will use ‘HDRP or solution polymerisation’ and ‘emulsion polymerisation’. There is not a lot of information in literature about the use of solution polymerisation for the preparation of nanogels but I can send you some if you need it.
In the experimental part you will have to describe the synthesis of nanogels using ‘solution polymerisation or HDRP’ (the protocol I sent you) and then you will have to describe the synthesis using emulsion polymerisation, that you can take it from literature. I also added to that link some articles having nanogels prepared by emulsion polymerisation that I think we could use, please check the experimental parts.
This is the instructions I have got from my supervisor.