Design and Manufacture of Functional Microcapsules and Engineered Particles

Memo

The demand for functional microcapsules or particles that can be successfully formulated into complex products to increase consumer benefits is ever increasing. Despite this, the range of available particles or microcapsules that can be manufactured cost effectively and at appropriate scale for many industries including, for example, pharmaceuticals, personal care, foods and fragrances remains limited.



Technical challenges associated with this field are many and include encapsulating low molecular weight highly-volatile materials within complex surfactant and polymer matrices and having them release on demand. Even if a design for such a system can be realized in the laboratory, there is then the challenge of manufacture. Many academic reports of possible particles/capsules include many synthetic steps and conversion of these to viable commercial processes is not trivial. Another challenge is the manufacture of particles with well-defined and non-spherical shape, high uniformity in size and surface properties.



This research field is multi-disciplinary and requires inputs from chemistry, materials science, chemical engineering and others. The conference will provide a forum for scientists and engineers from both academic and industrial organizations who are actively involved in this area to come together and share information on their latest research. The conference will aim to promote and encourage interaction amongst researchers with an emphasis on defining the challenges around successful translation of novel capsule designs into products that can be manufactured.