Introduction: Alginate is a natural polysaccharide, extracted from brown algae. It has wide field of application due to its biodegradability, low cost and gelation under mild conditions with crosslinking agents like Ca2+, Ba2+ or other multivalent ions .Alginate is used widely in biomedical applications in the form of gel particles. These particles are used for the delivery of compounds such as lipids, probiotics , enzymes , vitamins and more. Many methods have been used for particle production, including dropping, jet break-up, extrusion , emulsification , microfluidic devices and more. The production of uniform, mono-modal distributed particles using lab-based equipment is however challenging. Although the production of larger gel particles (100μm and more) is straight-forwards, the production of uniform particles in the range of 10 to 100pm remains problematic. Here, we demonstrate a new method to produce mono-modally distributed uniform particles using a low cost, widely available ink-jet printer system. Materials and Methods: The gel particles were produced using a standard inkjet printer (HP Deskjet 1010). First, a cleaned cartridge (HP 301 black) was filled with 5ml of sodium alginate solution (Sigma). Adocument file in Microsoft Word format containing black coloured rectangle was sent (200 copy) from laptop to printer (HP 1010 printer) and the cartridge sprayed droplets into a beaker containing 30ml of 0.1 M Calcium Chloride solution (Sigma) with 150pl of Tween 80 (MP Biomedicals) under agitation. Then the particles were washed twice with distilled water (Arium Advance system). Results and Discussion: The procedure was conducted with different concentrations of alginate solution (0.5wt%, 0.75wt%, 1.0wt%, 1.25wt%, 1.5wt%). The best in terms of uniformity of generated gel particles was at 1.25wt% and 1.5wt%. The vol. weighted mean size was 21.9pm. As shown in the formulated gel particles were more dispersed, with lower concentrations of alginate solution (＜0.5%w/w) the gel particles tent to form aggregates and in case of higher concentration (＞1.5% w/w) the printed had clogged very often because of high viscosity. We also sprayed with colour dye containing cartridge to generate gel particles. This time d(0.5) of the particles were 8.3pm. We conclude that the method provide a process of production of gel particles that can be conducted in a cheap and easy manner for encapsulation of various materials or generation of functional particles for use in a lab. It is also possible to scale up the production with stacked cartridges comprising integrated electronic system.
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