Professor Thomas Mason & former grad student Michael Fryd (PhD Chemistry ’12), Staff Research Chemist, SC Johnson, are co-inventors on a newly issued patent.
The patent is titled “Process and System for Reducing Sizes of Emulsion Droplets and Emulsions Having Reduced Droplet Sizes”, US Patent #9000053.
“This is an exciting technology because it enables the fabrication of nanoscale emulsion droplets that are much smaller than those typically accessible to high-pressure homogenization, a standard method of making nanoemulsions for pharmaceutical products,” Professsor Mason said. “With our patented technology, we can create bulk nanoemulsions containing, for example, oil droplets that are as small as about ten nanometers in diameter dispersed in a continuous aqeuous phase. These very fine nanoscale oil droplets can be loaded with drug molecules or nutrients that can pass through biological barriers that would otherwise prevent larger nanoscale droplets from passing. The very fine nanoemulsion droplets are so small that the nanoemulsion dispersion resembles clear water, and the scattering of visible light from the droplets is insignificant; this appearance is very different than milk or mayonnaise that look white. In addition, the method of evaporative ripening that we have invented is a green process, because it recovers and re-uses intermediate chemicals that facilitate the droplet size reduction in a feedback loop. We see broad uses for this technology in the pharmaceutical, nutritional, agricultural, construction, home care, and personal care industries.”
Sizes of nanoscale droplets are reduced by evaporative ripening after high-flow emulsification.
Photo: Thomas Mason/UCLA
Full patent information can be found here.
For more information about Prof. Mason’s research please visit his homepage.
