Preparation of lipid nanoparticles by micro-mixer Process simulation and experimental study

¹ Center for Simulation and Modelling of Particulate Systems, Southeast University-Monash University Joint Research Institute, Suzhou, Jiangsu, PR China
² ARC Research Hub for Computational Particle Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Vic 3800, Australia

^* e-mail: 992631164@qq.com
^a e-mail: ztong@seu.edu.cn

Abstract

Controlling the sizes of liposomes is critical in drug delivery systems because it directly influences their cellular uptake, transportation, and accumulation behaviour. Although micro-mixer has frequently been employed when synthesizing nano‑sized liposomes, little is known regarding how flow characteristics determine liposome formation. The mixing performance of a three-dimensional micromixer with a herringbone groove structure was studied by numerical analysis, and its structure was optimized. The model was verified by simulation and experiment. In the herringbone groove structure, excellent mixing index can be achieved by split-recombination and chaotic advection mechanism. The results show that the mixing index increases with the increase of Reynolds number, and the mixing is very sensitive to the shape of the groove, which can be used for mixing control in microdevices.