title: Solvent free fabrication of micro and nanostructured drug coatings by thermal evaporation for controlled release and increased effects.
abstract: Nanostructuring of drug delivery systems offers many promising applications like precise control of dissolution and release kinetics, enhanced activities, flexibility in terms of surface coatings, integration into implants, designing the appropriate scaffolds or even integrating into microelectronic chips etc. for different desired applications. In general such kind of structuring is difficult due to unintentional mixing of chemical solvents used during drug formulations. We demonstrate here the successful solvent-free fabrication of micro-nanostructured pharmaceutical molecules by simple thermal evaporation (TE). The evaporation of drug molecules and their emission to a specific surface under vacuum led to controlled assembling of the molecules from vapour phase to solid phase. The most important aspects of thermal evaporation technique are: solvent-free, precise control of size, possibility of fabricating multilayer/hybrid, and free choice of substrates. This could be shown for twenty eight pharmaceutical substances of different chemical structures which were evaporated on surfaces of titanium and glass discs. Structural investigations of different TE fabricated drugs were performed by atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy which revealed that these drug substances preserve their structurality after evaporation. Titanium discs coated with antimicrobial substances by thermal evaporation were subjected to tests for antibacterial or antifungal activities, respectively. A significant increase in their antimicrobial activity was observed in zones of inhibition tests compared to controls of the diluted substances on the discs made of paper for filtration. With thermal evaporation, we have successfully synthesized solvent-free nanostructured drug delivery systems in form of multilayer structures and in hybrid drug complexes respectively. Analyses of these substances consolidated that thermal evaporation opens up the possibility to convert dissoluble drug substances into the active forms by their transfer onto a specific surface without the need of their prior dissolution.
authors.affiliation: Functional Nanomaterials, Institute for Materials Science, Christian Albrechts University Kiel, Kaiserstrasse, Germany.
authors.forename: Eman S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Zarie
authors.forename: Viktor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kaidas
authors.forename: Dawit
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gedamu
authors.forename: Yogendra K
authors.initials: YK
authors.lastname: Mishra
authors.forename: Rainer
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Adelung
authors.forename: Franz H
authors.initials: FH
authors.lastname: Furkert
authors.forename: Regina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Scherließ
authors.forename: Hartwig
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Steckel
authors.forename: Birte
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Groessner-Schreiber
mesh_terms: D000890:Anti-Infective Agents / Q000737:chemistry*; D003692:Delayed-Action Preparations / Q000737:chemistry; D015195:Drug Design; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry*; D012995:Solubility; D012997:Solvents
chemical_list: D000890:Anti-Infective Agents; D003692:Delayed-Action Preparations; D012997:Solvents