Sergey Dergunov, Mariya Kim, and Sergey Shmakov published a paper on measuring the thickness of vesicle-templates nanocapsules in Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. Although our group has been working with vesicle-templates nanocapsules for many years, we did not have a direct measurement of one of the most important parameters of nanocapsules – the thickness of their shells. Until now. Using small-angle neutron scattering, our multi-institutional team found that the thickness of shells of our capsules is 1.0±0.1 nm. This finding confirms that the shells of our nanocapsules are among the thinnest materials with controlled permeability ever created. This work was done in collaboration with Andrew G. Richter from Valparaiso University, Sai Venkatesh Pingali and Volker S. Urban from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and Yun Liu from National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). To conduct experiments, our group traveled to neutron scattering facilities at ORNL and NIST.

Mariya’s and Sergey’s paper was published in Langmuir. This paper shows that the quantity of encapsulated charged molecules can be controlled through the interactions with the scaffold that is used to create nanocapsules. By controlling these interactions either through changing the formulation of surfactant scaffold or adjusting the pH of the solution, Mariya and Sergey learned how to increase or decrease the concentration of encapsulated molecules. They work offers greater control on the composition of nanocapsule-based devices.