Electrospray Production of Nanoparticles for Drug/Nucleic Acid Delivery

Many techniques have been developed to produce nanoparticles. Among them, electrospray has attracted recent research interest because it is an elegant and versatile way to make a broad array of nanoparticles. Electrospray is a technique that uses an electric field to disperse or break up a liquid. Compared with current technologies, such as bulk mixing, high pressure homogenization and double emulsion techniques, electrospray has three potential advantages. First, electrospray can generate monodisperse droplets whose size can vary from tens of nanometer to hundreds of micrometers, depending on the processing parameters. Secondly, it is a very gentle method. The free charge, induced by the electric field, only concentrates at the surface of the liquid, and does not significantly affect sensitive biomolecules such as DNA. Finally electrospray has the ability to generate structured micro/nanoparticles in a more controlled way with high drug/nucleic acid encapsulation efficiency.