DAINTech – formulation

Application

• Personal care
• Coatings and paints
• Speciality chemicals
• Pharmaceuticals

Development Status

• Demonstration using various industrial colloids at kg-scale

IP Status

• Priority patent application filed 2019 (PCT WO2020254813)
  

Commercial Offering

• Commercial licensing and/or co-development

Opportunity

University of Edinburgh researchers have developed DAINTech, a new gel-phase formulation chassis technology. The DAINTech technology provides a route to stable formulations with appealing sensory aspects using established and cost-effective industrial materials, and without the use of polymer or microplastic elements. It also offers an alternative potential solution to formulate otherwise challenging ingredients. The platform technology is expected to be broadly applicable to a wide range of industry applications and gives commercial partners the opportunity to implement innovative, environmentally sustainable and commercially valuable formulation products as part of their product development process.

Technology

The DAINTech technology is based on the dispersion of particles within a nematic phase. Resulting defect lines form within the dispersion connect and entangle throughout the nematic phase creating a gel phase capable of carrying a dispersed phase of 20% to 45% by volume. The DAINTech technology has been demonstrated with a host of industrial colloids, including spheriglass 3000, spheriglass 5000, titania, calcite, cornflour and sunflower oil in lyotropic nematic phases.

The resulting DAINTech formulations are highly viscoelastic, physically stable, and can be water or oil-based. The viscoelasticity of the system is tunable over several magnitudes to provide long-term stability against phase separation and coalescence. The DAINTech systems are also exceptionally shear-thinning with a much lower exponent of apparent viscosity than conventional formulation chassis.

Notably when the gel phase yields, the viscosity approaches that of the background nematic phase; then when shear has removed the structure and magnitude of the yield stress is recovered within seconds.

Benefits

• Long-term stability, even with dense particles
• Aqueous and non-aqueous compatible
• Compatible with standard processing equipment and commonly used ingredients
• Reduced dependence on synthetic polymers and microplastics

Publication

• Wood et al (2011). Self-quenched defect glass in a colloid-nematic liquid crystal composite, Science, 334 (6052), 79-83.
• Katyan et al (2021). The yielding of defect-entangled dispersions in a nematic solvent, Journal of Rheology 65, 1297 (2021); DOI: 10.1122/8.0000243

Please note, the header image is purely illustrative: Tanya Dolmatova via Getty Images.

Quote: TEC1104077