[nanoPost] Fluid-Bicontinuous particle-stabilised gel

LICENSING OPPORTUNITY: Gels are soft solids with useful mechanical and other properties; they are used in many products. Many of these properties exploit the presence of a finite elastic modulus on commonly observed timescales, accompanied by yield behaviour enabling flow under large stresses.

Various routes to the creation of gels exist, but since the variety of product behaviours required is almost limitless, any new generic technology for gel creation opens wide possibilities for new and improved products.

Some gels represent equilibrium structures in a given range of temperature for a given state of chemical bonding (fixed by synthesis), but other gels are nonequilibrium arrested states whose properties can therefore depend on process history. This is useful in product design.

A key feature of these gels is the presence of inter-penetrating domains of immiscible fluids (bicontinuity).

Key Benefits

Flow control of bi-continuous fluids;
Intimate mixing of reagents in two immiscible fluids;
Interfacial catalysis;
Stabilisation of non-equilibrium mixtures;
Properties (eg. shear modulus) can be varied over many orders of magnitude.
Applications

Biotechnology;
Micro-reactors;
Drilling;
Oil & Gas;
Environmental clean up;
Chemical;
Pharmaceutical;
Foodstuffs;
Personal care products.
IP Status

A UK Patent has been applied for.

The technology is now available under a non-exclusive licence agreement within specific application areas .