title: Luminescent porous silica fibers as drug carriers.
abstract: Luminescent and porous silica fibers have been successfully prepared by using the electrospinning process. The obtained multifunctional silica fibers, which possess a porous structure and display blue luminescence, can serve as a drug delivery host carrier, using ibuprofen (IBU) as a model drug, allowing the investigation of storage/release properties. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), N(2) adsorption/desorption, photoluminescence (PL) spectra, and kinetic decay were used to characterize the structural, morphological, and optical properties of the as-obtained samples. The results reveal that the multifunctional silica materials exhibit an irregular porous structure, and display a fiberlike morphology with dimensions of several hundred nanometers in width and several millimeters in length. The obtained silica fibers exhibit an intense broad bluish emission, which might be attributed to impurities and/or defects in the silica fibers. The IBU-loaded silica fiber system shows blue luminescence under UV irradiation and controlled release behavior for IBU. In addition, the emission intensities of silica fibers in the drug carrier system vary with the released amount of IBU, thus allowing the drug release to be easily tracked and monitored by the change of the luminescence intensity.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resources Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, PR China. zyhou@ciac.jl.cn
authors.forename: Zhiyao
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Hou
authors.forename: Cuimiao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Chunxia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Zhenhe
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Ziyong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Guogang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Wenxin
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Chong
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lin
mesh_terms: D004337:Drug Carriers / Q000737:chemistry*; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems; D017886:Durapatite / Q000138:chemical synthesis; D007052:Ibuprofen; D049449:Luminescence; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D046529:Microscopy, Electron, Transmission; D016062:Porosity; D012822:Silicon Dioxide / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D004337:Drug Carriers; D012822:Silicon Dioxide; D017886:Durapatite; D007052:Ibuprofen