Achievement

A novel method for fabricating near perfectly spherical polymer shells with highly uniform shell wall thickness (concentricity) was reported by Alex Tucker-Schwartz (Garrell Group) in Langmuir (DIO: 10.1021/la103719z). Using AC electric fields, double emulsion (DE) droplets containing monomer were transformed into spherical (≥98%) and concentric (~98%) droplets and then photopolymerized into polymer shells. The polymerized shells were found to maintain the high degree of sphericity and concentricity imparted to the droplets by the electric fields. Extremely spherical and concentric polymer shells are a vital component in inertial confinement fusion and high energy density physics experiments, but historically shells have been challenging to fabricate. The newly developed electric field-driven centering and polymerization of DE droplets offers a simple route to produce polymer shells for high energy density physics experiments and for other applications of concentric polymer shells.