A novel gel deformation technique for fabrication of ellipsoidal and discoidal polymeric microparticles

A simple fabrication technique for anisotropic particles of ellipsoidal/discoidal shape has been developed, based on stretching/compressing of oil-in-water emulsion templates embedded into an elastic aqueous gel; a range of solid anisotropic microparticles have been fabricated by polymerising of the deformed oil drops in the elastic gel matrix and their shape and aspect ratios have been studied as a function of the gel deformation.