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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 Oct 1.
Published in final edited form as: Biomaterials. 2009 Jul 17;30(29):5283–5291. doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2009.06.032

Figure 5.

Figure 5

The formation of PEG8-VS/PEG8-amine microspheres was observed by confocal microscopy using fluorescently labeled PEG derivatives. A) PEG8-VS (green) and PEG8-amine (blue) were separately added to PBS + 1.2 M sodium sulfate to cause phase separation at room temperature. The phase separated solutions were then mixed. Mass transfer occurred between the droplets without coalescence, indicating that Ostwald ripening may contribute to coarsening. B) Mass transfer was also directly observed under the same conditions between adjacent PEG-rich droplets without coalescence. C) Using conditions more typical of microsphere formation, PEG-rich droplets are shown before (i) and after (ii) coalescence. PEG8-VS (green) was pre-reacted with PEG8-amine (blue) to dPCS ≅ 100 nm and then crosslinked above the cloud point for 15 min at 37°C in PBS + 0.6 M sodium sulfate.