Chapter 15 - Carbon and Carbon Nanotube Drug Delivery and Its Characterization, Properties, and Applications

Abstract

Carbon and carbon nanotubes are new materials that can be used for many applications, e.g., hydrogen storage, batteries, electromechanical actuators, compliant electrodes, and drug delivery. Carbon has many allotropes, e.g., carbon nanotube, diamond, graphite, graphene, and bucky ball. Carbon nanotubes are one kind of carbon allotrope. The outstanding properties of carbon and carbon nanotubes for drug delivery are good thermal, mechanical, and electrical properties and good chemical resistance. Carbon and carbon nanotubes can be made from both natural and synthetic raw materials by many methods, e.g., chemical vapor deposition, plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, sol–gel, conventional processes, and plasma. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is deposition method used to produce high quality, high-performance, solid materials, typically under vacuum. The advantages of selecting a carbon nanotube drug-delivery system to replace drug injection or swallowing of tablets, e.g., it is easy to control the optimum amount reaching the target site, the side effects to other tissues or organs during therapy can be reduced, damage to the drug in a biological environment can be avoided, therapeutic agents such as proteins and peptide drugs can be protected from degradation or their half-life can be extended, and it is easy to control the uniform release of the drug. Another advantage of this type of drug delivery with nicotine for a smoker is not disturbing other nonsmoking people.