Reducing particle size of biodegradable nanomaterial for efficient curcumin loading

Periodic mesoporous organosilica (PMO) are well known as highly potential materials in biomedical applications. In this work, biodegradable PMO nanoparticles, named E4S, which was incorporated of redox-responsive tetrasulfide bonds, were successfully synthesized with particle size smaller than 50 nm. We study the effect of synthetic conditions, especially the amounts of an alkaline catalyst on particle size and porosity of the nanomaterial. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope, N 2 isotherm sorption, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and thermogravimetric analysis techniques were applied to define structural characteristics. Curcumin, a highly hydrophobic, bioactive natural product, was chosen for loading onto the porous structure of E4S. The material exhibited high efficiency for curcumin loading with the capacity up to 1984 mg g −1 . According to the loading investigation of the nanoparticles with various sizes, it is noted that the smallest particle shows the highest curcumin loading capacity which may result from small particle sizes and high specific surface area. These results suggest that ethane-tetrasulfide BPMO could be used as an excellent nanomaterial for curcumin loading. Graphical abstract