Abstract
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have attracted great interest in biomedical fields. However, the potential toxicity and poor dispersion of CNTs have greatly limited its application. In this work, a mussel-inspired method combined with the “thiol-Michael” click reaction was used to modify the surface of CNT and improve its properties. Firstly, a CNT was treated with dopamine, and then alginate grafted with L-cysteine was anchored onto the surface of CNT via click reaction, which realized the long-time dispersion of CNT in water. Furthermore, the in vitro test also demonstrated that the alginate may improve the biocompatibility of CNT, and thus may broaden the application of CNT in the biomedical field.
Highlights
Due to its amazing mechanical, electrical and thermal properties, carbon nanotubes (CNT) and other carbon-based materials have been widely used in composite materials [1], energy conversion and storage services [2], catalysts [3], sensors [4,5], drug delivery [6,7], antiviral agents [8], tissue engineering [9] and many promising fields [10,11,12]
When CNT and dopamine are mixed together in a buffer solution with a pH value of 8.5, dopamine will self-polymerize, and PDA layers will be formed on the surface of CNT
When ALG was functionalized with L-cysteine (ALG-SH) was mixed with CNT@PDA, the quinone units will react quickly with thiol groups of ALG-SH, and ALG molecules were successfully grafted on the surface of CNT, forming CNT@ALG (Figure 1)
Summary
Due to its amazing mechanical, electrical and thermal properties, carbon nanotubes (CNT) and other carbon-based materials have been widely used in composite materials [1], energy conversion and storage services [2], catalysts [3], sensors [4,5], drug delivery [6,7], antiviral agents [8], tissue engineering [9] and many promising fields [10,11,12]. Various methods, both non-covalent and covalent, have been widely investigated to tune the surface properties of CNT and realize their homogeneous dispersion [17]. The noncovalent approaches are carried out and low cost. Various molecules, such as aromatic small molecules, polysaccharides, conjugated polymers, have been used to modify the surface of CNT through noncovalent π-π stacking or hydrophobic interactions [18]. The noncovalent method can improve the dispersion state or solubility of CNT and offers excellent properties to be used in various nanomaterials and devices
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