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research article

Versatile Capillary Cells for Handling Concentrated Samples in Analytical Ultracentrifugation

Ong, Quy K.  
•
Xufeng, Xu  
•
Stellacci, Francesco  
February 1, 2024
Analytical Chemistry

In concentrated macromolecular dispersions, far-from-ideal intermolecular interactions determine the dispersion behaviors including phase transition, crystallization, and liquid-liquid phase separation. Here, we present a novel versatile capillary-cell design for analytical ultracentrifugation-sedimentation equilibrium (AUC-SE), ideal for studying samples at high concentrations. Current setups for such studies are difficult and unreliable to handle, leading to a low experimental success rate. The design presented here is easy to use, robust, and reusable for samples in both aqueous and organic solvents while requiring no special tools or chemical modification of AUC cells. The key and unique feature is the fabrication of liquid reservoirs directly on the bottom window of AUC cells, which can be easily realized by laser ablation or mechanical drilling. The channel length and optical path length are therefore tunable. The success rate for assembling this new cell is close to 100%. We demonstrate the practicality of this cell by studying: (1) the equation of state and second virial coefficients of concentrated gold nanoparticle dispersions in water and bovine serum albumin (BSA) as well as lysozyme solution in aqueous buffers, (2) the gelation phase transition of DNA and BSA solutions, and (3) liquid-liquid phase separation of concentrated BSA/polyethylene glycol (PEG) droplets.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1021/acs.analchem.3c05006
Web of Science ID

WOS:001159022300001

Author(s)
Ong, Quy K.  
Xufeng, Xu  
Stellacci, Francesco  
Date Issued

2024-02-01

Publisher

Amer Chemical Soc

Published in
Analytical Chemistry
Volume

96

Issue

6

Start page

2567

End page

2573

Subjects

Physical Sciences

•

Equilibrium-Sedimentation

•

Association

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
SUNMIL  
FunderGrant Number

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur F?rderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung

SNSF

101017821

European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program

Available on Infoscience
February 23, 2024
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/205540
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