A three-tiered colloidosomal microreactor for continuous flow catalysis

Integration of biological and inorganic components into hierarchical assembled structures to enhance catalytic reactions remains challenging. Here, the authors report a rational design of three-tiered colloidosomes via the Pickering emulsion process and demonstrate the acceleration of lipase catalyzed ester hydrolysis within a continuous flow reactor packed with the colloidosomes. Integrative colloidosomes with hierarchical structure and advanced function may serve as biomimetic microreactors to carry out catalytic reactions by compartmentalizing biological species within semipermeable membranes. Despite of recent progress in colloidosome design, integration of biological and inorganic components into tiered structures to tackle the remaining challenges of biocatalysis is highly demanded. Here, we report a rational design of three-tiered colloidosomes via the Pickering emulsion process. The microreactor consists of crosslinked amphiphilic silica-polymer hybrid nanoparticles as the semipermeable shell, an enzyme-incorporated catalytic sub-layer, and a partially-silicified adsorptive lumen. By leveraging confinement and enrichment effect, we demonstrate the acceleration of lipase-catalyzed ester hydrolysis within the microcompartment of organic-inorganic hybrid colloidosomes. The catalytic colloidosomes are further assembled into a closely packed column for enzymatic reactions in a continuous flow format with enhanced reaction rates. The three-tiered colloidosomes provide a reliable platform to integrate functional building blocks into a biomimetic compartmentalized microreactor with spatially controlled organization and high-performance functions.

Automated summary

The authors presented a rational design of three-tiered colloidosomes via the Pickering emulsion process for accelerating lipase-catalyzed reactions. These integrative structures can serve as biomimetic microreactors for catalytic reactions by compartmentalizing biological species.