A Better Solution Using Nanoengineering
Thanks to research at the Mawson Institute, nanocavities, nanocontainers and nanoreactors offer better solutions for a range of medical situations including drug delivery and catalysis.
At the Mawson Institute, plasma deposition has been used in the fabrication of nanostructures within ultra-thin films, which can be applied a wide range of materials and products.
Template-assisted fabrication of nanocavities has been achieved within plasma polymer films with thicknesses of <100 nm. Gold nanoparticles are used as a sacrificial template. The advantage of using gold nanoparticles is ease of synthesis, control over desired size and size distribution. Gold nanoparticles are incorporated within plasma polymer films and then dissolved, forming empty cavities. These cavities can be filled with drugs for drug delivery applications.
Replacing the gold with silver produces surfaces that resist bacteria adsorption, and kill bacteria. These show excellent antiseptic efficiency. This is important in biomedical applications since the amount of silver should be just sufficient to kill small prokaryotic bacteria cells but not the bigger mammalian eukaryotic cells.
AFM topography images of a) gold nanoparticles (70 nm)b) the same as a) but covered with 25 nm polymer coating c) same as b but after immersion in chemical to remove gold for 4 hours leaving cavities (The lateral dimensions of all images are 1 x 1 microns) |