Synthesis And Characterization Of Water Soluble And Stimuli-Responsive Carbon Nanohorns

Carbon Nanohorns (CNHs) is a new member of fullerene family after the discovery of carbon nanotubes. It is aggregates of graphitic tubes that have closed ends with cone-shaped caps, while the aggregates are 80-100 nm in diameter. CNHs has distinctive spherical assembly structures and possesses superior advantages than normal nanomaterials used for drug, gene and protein delivery in vivo. The insolubility of CNHs will restrict its applications in biology. Functionalization of CNHs to confer water-solubility and other new properties on CNHs will make it possible to build a new efficient delivery system of targeting.In order to endow CNHs with water solubility, stability, biocompatibility and stimuli-sensitivity simultaneously, this research mainly focuses on the following aspects: theoretically analysis of the feasibility of functionalization of CNHs by biodegradable DexPNI; investigation of the stability of CNHs-DexPNI composite in different solvents; investigation of the thermo-sensitivity of CNHs-DexPNI composite; loading Fe3O4 nanoparticles on CNHs-DexPNI surface to synthesize magnetic CNHs which could be used for targeted drug delivery. The functionalized CNHs were characterized by high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), atomic force microscope (AFM), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). The temperature sensitivity was studied by UV-Vis spectrophotometer and DLS. The results show that the CNHs were successfully isolated by DexPNI and were stable in different solvents. Thermo-responsive CNHs and superparamagnetic CNHs were successfully prepared by DexPNI functionalization and loading Fe3O4 nanoparticles, respectively.