Esther Amstad

Biography

Esther Amstad studied material science at ETH in Zurich. She also carried out her PhD thesis at the same University under the supervision of Prof. Marcus Textor; for her thesis, she worked on the surface modification and steric stabilization of oxide nanoparticles. As a postdoctoral fellow, she joined the experimental condensed soft matter group of David A. Weitz at Harvard University where she used droplet based microfluidics to assemble different types of functional micro- and nanomaterials. In addition, she developped new microfluidic devices that enable the production of very small, airborne drops as well as devices that produce highly monodisperse emulsion drops at a very high throughput. In June 2014, Esther joined the material science department (IMX) of EPFL where she is leading the Soft Materials Laboratory (SMAL).

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Many properties of materials, including their dissolution kinetics, hardness, and optical appearance, depend on their structure. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to control the structure of low molecular weight organic compounds that have a high propensity to crystallize if they are formulated from solutions wherein they have a high mobility. This limitation can be overcome by formulating these compounds within small airborne drops that rapidly dry, thereby limiting the time molecules have to arrange into the thermodynamically most stable phase. Such drops can be formed with a surface acoustic wave (SAW)-based spray-drier. In this paper, we demonstrate that the structure of a model low molecular weight compound relevant to applications in pharmacology and food, succinic acid, can be readily controlled with the supersaturation rate. Succinic acid particles preserve the metastable structure over at least 3 months if the initial succinic acid concentration is below 2% of its saturation concentration such that the supersaturation rate is high. We demonstrate that also the stability of the metastable phases against their transformation into the most stable phase increases with decreasing initial solute concentration and hence with increasing supersaturation rate of the spray-dried solution. These insights open up new opportunities to control the crystal structure and therefore properties of low molecular weight compounds that have a high propensity to crystallize.

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2023

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Micrometer sized capsules are often used as single entities for the encapsulation and release of active ingredients, for example in food, cosmetics, and drug delivery. Important parameters that determine the stability of capsules and the release of reagents contained in them are the dimensions and composition of their shell. Most capsule shells are rather thick, thereby occupying a significant fraction of the capsule volume, or they are rigid, making the capsules fragile. This work introduces viscoelastic capsules with very thin shells of order 10 nm. Despite the thin nature of these shells, they are flexible, self-healing, yet, for practical applications impermeable even to low molecular weight substances. These shells are formed by ionically crosslinking surfactants that are functionalized with catechol-derivatives. This work investigates the influence of the number of chelators contained per surfactant and the crosslinking ion on the rheological properties of the membranes and relate it to the mechanical properties of the resulting capsules. This work demonstrates that these shells are impermeable to molecules as small as 340 Da even if loaded with cell culture media, indicating their potential for biomedical applications.

WILEY2023

Ionically crosslinked hydrogels containing metal coordination motifs have piqued the interest of researchers in recent decades due to their self-healing and adhesive properties. In particular, catechol-functionalized bulk hydrogels have received a lot of attention because of their bioinspired nature. By contrast, very little is known about thin viscoelastic membranes made using similar chelator-ion pair motifs. This shortcoming is surprising because the unique interfacial properties of these membranes, namely, their self-healing and adhesion, would be ideal for capsule shells, adhesives, or for drug delivery purposes. We recently demonstrated the feasibility to fabricate 10 nm thick viscoelastic membranes from catechol-functionalized surfactants that are ionically crosslinked at the liquid/liquid interface. However, it is unclear if the vast know-how existing on the influence of the chelator-ion pair on the mechanical properties of ionically crosslinked three-dimensional (3D) hydrogels can be translated to two-dimensional (2D) systems. To address this question, we compare the dynamic mechanical properties of ionically crosslinked pyrogallol functionalized hydrogels with those of viscoelastic membranes that are crosslinked using the same chelator-ion pairs. We demonstrate that the storage and loss moduli of viscoelastic membranes follow a trend similar to that of the hydrogels, with the membrane becoming stronger as the ion-chelator affinity increases. Yet, membranes relax significantly faster than bulk equivalents. These insights enable the targeted design of viscoelastic, adhesive, self-healing membranes possessing tunable mechanical properties. Such capsules can potentially be used, for example, in cosmetics, as granular inks, or with additional work that includes replacing the fluorinated block by a hydrocarbon-based one in drug delivery and food applications.

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2023