Intellectual Property Office

Non-Confidential Disclosures

“Economical Method for the Production of Stable, Non-Aggregating Colloidal Particle Doublets”

PSU Inv. Disc. No 2006-3202
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Field of the Invention/Key Words:

Colloidal particle doublets formed from polymers, and oxides. The inventors continue to explore the use of other materials.

Inventors:

Darrell Velegol, Allison M. Yake, Joseph McDermott

Links:

Inventor Website
Published Patent Application

Background:

Colloidal particles are commercially produced by both large, commodity-oriented companies and small specialty research companies. These spherical particles are now produced in sizes from roughly 20 nm to 5000 nm from various polymeric materials. Colloidal doublets are unique non-spherical colloidal particles that are formed when two spherical particles connect. The inventors are not aware of any known commercial process that produce colloidal doublets economically. While a few processes exist, they are limited to producing sub-gram quantities of materials, rather than 100s or 1000s or more of kilograms that would be needed to make the process commercially viable. In addition, severe agitation, such as sonication, vortexing, or high speed centrifugation, often causes these doublets to break apart.

Invention description:

The disclosed invention is a process for making stable colloidal doublets out of polymer colloids and other materials with a size range 20 nm to 100 nm. This process produces doublet that do not undergo further aggregation. The doublets can be homodoublets (i.e., two particles of the same size, surface functionalization, or composition connected into a doublet) or heterodoublets (i.e., different sizes, surface functionalization or even different materials including silica and metallic particles). Experimental data shows that the resulting doublets can be easily produced in less than 20 minutes with little waste or production of higher order aggregates such as triplets. The process is simple, reproducible and scalable. The doublets produced by this invention become very stable to process stresses, including sonication, and have demonstrated good shelf-life.

Advantages/Applications:

The researchers believe that there is an immediate demand for colloidal doublets within both the academic and industrial research labs. The inventors believe that these novel materials have larger commercial potential as films, coatings, adhesives, high throughput filters, biosensors, and within photonics, photolithography, and drug delivery applications.

Contact:

Matthew Smith
Sr. Technology Licensing Officer
Intellectual Property Office
113 Technology Center
The Pennsylvania State Univ.
University Park, PA 16802-7000
Phone: (814) 863-1122
Fax: (814) 865-3591
E-mail: mds126@psu.edu