1.
Langmuir
; 34(7): 2420-2424, 2018 02 20.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-29376390
ABSTRACT
Drug delivery devices are generally inefficient when releasing the active compound at the targeted position. In this work, we investigate nanoporous gold (np-Au) as the drug eluting device, and we use the precipitation of NaCl as a model of drug sedimentation to evaluate the patterns of solute distribution. Hydrophilic and hydrophobic modifications of np-Au result in different, but both inhomogeneous, release patterns, with most of the precipitate forming outside the device. In contrast, the fabrication of a hydrophobic-hydrophilic-layered architecture allows full penetration through the bicontinuous np-Au network, resulting in a homogeneous release pattern. Similar architectures could be used to enhance the efficacy of drug delivery.