Ne 300

The coaxial electrospraying setup consisted of a voltage power supply (ES50P-5W/DAM, Gamma, Ormond Beach, FL, USA), two syringe pumps (NE-300, New Era Pump Systems Inc., Farmingdale, NY, USA), a homemade concentric needle with inner diameters of 1.07 mm (outer needle of 17 gauge) and 0.5 mm (inner needle of 21 gauge), and a collector. The core solution and shell solution were individually pumped from a sterile 5 mL plastic syringe pass through the inner and outer needle at the rate of 3 mL/h and 7 mL/h. The needle tip was located at 10 cm from the surface of receiving fluid and a voltage of 12 kV was applied [18 (link)]. The microcapsules were formed when the droplets through from concentric needle dropped vertically into the receiving fluid. The room temperature was about 25 °C and the relative humidity was in the range of 40–50%, respectively.
The obtained synbiotic microcapsules were named in view of the fact that they contained probiotics and distinct types of substrates. The microcapsules separately containing FOS, fish oil, and the complex of FOS and fish oil were referred to as SPI-F-L-P, SPI-O-L-P, and SPI-O-F-L-P, respectively, and the blank microcapsule without additional substrate was called SPI-L-P.

Fibrous CA/NC composites were fabricated by electrospinning. First, CA was dissolved in a mixed-acetone/H₂O solvent = 80/20 v/v at a concentration of 10 wt%. Then, three different composites were prepared by adding the respective nanoclays (10 wt% with respect to CA) to the CA spinning solution. The obtained CA/NC1, CA/NC2, and CA/NC3 mixtures were homogenized by vigorous stirring and sonication (Bandelin Sonorex, 160/640 W, 35 kHz, Berlin, Germany) for 1 h. Then, mixtures were loaded into a 10 mL Luer-Lock tip plastic syringes capped with a 20-gauge needle, placed horizontally in syringe pumps (NE-300, New Era Pump Systems, Inc., Farmingdale, NY, USA), and delivered at a constant feed rate of 3 mL/h. The electrospinning of the mixtures was conducted at an applied voltage of 25 kV, a tip-to-collector distance of 15 cm, and a collector rotation speed of 1000 rpm. Electrospun CA/NC composites were dried under vacuum at 30 °C in order to remove any solvent residues.

The spatial resolution and FOV for LUS and OA imaging modes were characterized using 1% agar phantoms with different amounts of ≈90 µm black polyethylene spheres (Cospheric LLC, USA) embedded. The phantoms were placed into a holder and submerged together with the transducer array in a water tank thermostabilized at 24°C. The OPLUS fiber bundle was connected to a custom‐made fiber bundle as described above and inserted into the central hole of the spherical array transducer. The tip of the OPLUS fiber was offset by ≈1 cm toward the center of the array. The phantoms were simultaneously probed by light (OA) at 800 nm and acoustic waves (LUS), and the collected signals were averaged for 1000 laser pulses. A 1‐mm inner diameter polyethylene tubing was submerged together with the OPLUS setup to assess the achievable temporal resolution. For this, a syringe pump (NE‐300, New Era Pump Systems Inc.) was used to move ≈500 µm black polyethylene particles (Cospheric LLC, USA) along the tubing with a 1 mL min⁻¹ flow rate.

The experimental setup consisted of a syringe pump (NE-300, New Era Pump Systems, Inc., Farmingdale, NY, USA), a single brass needle (diameter of 1.63 mm), a high-voltage power supply connected to the needle, and a laboratory-scale electrospinning unit (NS24, Inovenso Co., Istanbul, Turkey). The collector can have different shapes and features as per request. An aluminum cylinder covered with grease-proof paper was used to collect the fibers. Then, plastic syringes filled with 20 mL suspensions were prepared. The collector and the tip of the needle were connected to a high-voltage power supply. The electrospinning parameters were optimized during the electrospinning process and found as 25–26.6 kV working voltage range, the distance between the needle and collector was 12 cm, and the flow rate values were ranged between 0.3 and 0.6 mL/h (the schematic illustration of the idea is shown in Figure 1).