US Patent Issued to NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY on Feb. 24 for "Polymer-mediated particle coarsening within hollow silica shell nanoreactors" (Illinois Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 24 -- United States Patent no. 12,558,725, issued on Feb. 24, was assigned to NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY (Evanston, Ill.).

"Polymer-mediated particle coarsening within hollow silica shell nanoreactors" was invented by Chad A. Mirkin (Wilmette, Ill.), Vinayak P. Dravid (Evanston, Ill.) and Liban Jibril (Evanston, Ill.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of forming a nanoparticle can include admixing an aqueous solution into an oil-phase to thereby form an emulsion of droplets of the aqueous solution in the oil phase, the aqueous solution comprising a nanostructure precursor and a polymer, adding a silane precursor and catalyst to form a silica shell around each of the dr...