Mechanical properties of semipermeable microcapsules

Abstract

A study has been made of the mechanical properties of the membrane of semipermeable nylon microcapsules containing erythrocyte hemolysate. The use of a "cell elastimeter" and the application of Laplace's Law have shown that the nylon membrane has very high resistance to stretching, but only negligible resistance to bending. The membrane tension in undeformed microcapsules has been determined to be 1840 dynes/cm and observed to increase with deformation, indicating elastic properties in the membrane. At a tension of 2520 dynes/cm, resistance to stretching is sharply reduced. The results indicate that the internal pressure varies directly as the reciprocal of microcapsule radius, and an extrapolation of these results, assuming that the relation holds for very small capsules, yields an internal pressure of 4.3 × 106 dynes/cm2 for a microcapsule of erythrocyte diameter. Any stretch in the nylon membrane has been shown to be almost irreversible. The diameter of the smallest pipette through which a spherical microcapsule can pass without suffering irreversible change has been found to be no smaller than 90% of the microcapsule diameter, and the pressure required is of the order of 105 dynes/cm2.