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  • TGA/Chemometrics addressing innovative preparation strategies for functionalized carbon nanotubes.

TGA/Chemometrics addressing innovative preparation strategies for functionalized carbon nanotubes.

Journal of pharmaceutical analysis (2020-09-15)
Roberta Risoluti, Giuseppina Gullifa, Elena Carcassi, Andrea Masotti, Stefano Materazzi
ABSTRACT

In this work, functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNTs) using two polyamine polymers, polyethyleneimine (PEI) and polyamidoamine dendrimer (PAMAM), were investigated by thermal analysis in order to address preparation strategies to obtain low cytotoxic compounds with the ability to conjugate microRNAs and, at the same time, to transfect efficiently endothelial cells. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was coupled to chemometrics as a novel analytical strategy to characterize functionalized CNTs from different preparation conditions. In particular, two starting materials were considered: very small CNTs and carboxylated CNTs (CNT-COOH) in order to examine the affinity with polymers. Chemometrics permitted to compare results from TGA and to investigate the effect of a number of factors affecting the synthesis of coated nanotubes including a different amount of involved polymer and the time required for the suspension for a satisfactory and reproducible preparation procedure. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of TGA as a tool able to address synthesis of coated CNTs to be employed as efficient drug delivery vectors in biomedical applications.

MATERIALS
Product Number
Brand
Product Description

Sigma-Aldrich
PAMAM dendrimer, ethylenediamine core, generation 5.0 solution, 5 wt. % in methanol
Sigma-Aldrich
Polyethylenimine, branched, average Mw ~25,000 by LS, average Mn ~10,000 by GPC, branched