wizyta

od 2020-09-20

Title: The influence of surfactant structure and geometry on nanotoxicity and dispersion of carbon nanotubes

Source: Biophysical Journal

Year : 2017

Abstract:

Graphene, nanotubes and fullerenes, also known as carbon nanomaterials (CN), because of the their unique properties have potential applications not only in preparation of new composite materials or in electronics, but they can be also components of drug delivery systems. However, the applications of CN in life sciences or biomedicine require stable dispersions of these materials in water. The hydrophobic nature of CN causes serious problems with their separation in water solutions. Our study is aimed to find a way of dispersing such CN systems in water, by the use of non-covalent surface modification via different surfactants. In this work we focused on the use of trimeric, dimeric and monomeric surfactants fornon-covalent surface modification of selected carbon nanotubes. The toxicity of these systems (aqueous solutions of CN with surfactants and surfactants solutions) towards selected cell cultures (e. g. HeLa cells) was also tested. The surfactants studied can interact with carbon nanotubes in a number of different modes: hydrophobic interactions (surfactant chains with CN side walls) or π-π interactions (aromatic rings of surfactants with CN surface). Infrared spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy were used for characterization of the systems studied. Finally, we focused on mechanical properties of cells exposed to surfactants and CN. This study was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Poland), within the project “

DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2016.11.858   (Pobrane:  2020-11-05)