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Mesoporous silica-coated gold nanorods with a thermally responsive polymeric cap for near-infrared-activated drug delivery

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Abstract

In this work, gold nanorods (AuNRs)/mesoporous silica (SiO2) nanoparticles capped with thermal-responsive polymer were fabricated to couple the photothermal property of AuNRs and the thermal-/pH-responsive properties of polymer in a single nanovehicle. Aliphatic poly(urethane-amine) (PUA) was employed as the smart polymer to cap the mesopores of AuNRs/SiO2 nanoparticles via in situ polymerization in supercritical CO2. Thermal-/pH-responsive PUA acted as the on–off switch to control the DOX release due to the stretch and shrinkage of the PUA polymer chains at different temperatures, whereas a remote near-infrared (NIR) light was used to activate the phase change and subsequent drug release. The in vitro drug release studies indicated that Au/SiO2/PUA nanoparticles exhibited distinguished pH-, thermal-, and NIR-dependent release properties. A short time exposure to NIR irradiation could distinctly increase the local temperature of nanoparticles, and the thermal-responsive polymeric cap enabled the DOX release in a significant reversible way by simply adjusting the NIR laser intensity. The present paper provides an ideal way to fabricate NIR-responsive drug carriers by combining stimuli-responsive polymer with inorganic matrix, which is highly attractive for remote controllable drug delivery.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by Henan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 162300410257) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 20874090).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001, People’s Republic of China

    Zhixuan Song, Jun Shi, Zheng Zhang, Zeer Qi, Shangru Han & Shaokui Cao

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  1. Zhixuan Song
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Correspondence to Jun Shi or Shaokui Cao.

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Song, Z., Shi, J., Zhang, Z. et al. Mesoporous silica-coated gold nanorods with a thermally responsive polymeric cap for near-infrared-activated drug delivery. J Mater Sci 53, 7165–7179 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-018-2117-7

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