Materials are composed of more than just their atomical makeup. Everywhere we look in nature and in man-made materials, there is an essence of structure that imparts mechanical, physical, and chemical characteristics; a reason behind why bones are porous, ceramics are heat-resistant, and composites are resilient. Materials science students know this better than others as part of our core curriculum, yet there are many avenues and applications for which these principles have yet to be applied. My research, though a collection of diverse projects, has focused on how we can specifically engineer encapsulation materials with the desired properties simply by changing the hierarchy of said material, and how to better understand the sensitive interplay between structural parameters. Beginning in Chapter 1, I focus on how from a single polymeric material core-shell microcapsule, we demonstrated the controllable, reversible, and pH-triggerable release of actives by tuning the pore sizes of the microcapsules, leading to mechanical measurements of individual microcapsules through the use of nanoindentation in Chapter 2. This chapter also documents my investigations into structure-mechanical property relationships toward a universal theory of capsule yield stress. Chapter 3 focuses on the development of a high-throughput tissue model system and investigates the effects of cellular encapsulation and geometric effects of vasculature on tumorous tissue behavior. Similar in the way that cells are directly influenced by the stiffness of their substrate, we found that tumors are also responsive to the shape of the nearby vasculature and other diffusional constrains and conditions.
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Function follows form: novel structured encapsulation materials via microfluidics
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