Abstract
Surface–molecule interactions play an essential role in loading capacity and release kinetics in nanostructured materials with high surface area-to-volume ratio. Engineering the surfaces via immobilizing functional moieties is, therefore, a versatile means to enhance the performance of drug delivery platforms with nanostructured components. Nanoporous gold (np-Au), with its high effective surface area, well-established gold-thiol chemistry, and tunable pore morphology, is an emerging material not only for drug delivery applications but also as a model system to study the influence of physicochemical surface properties on molecular loading capacity and release kinetics. Here, we functionalize np-Au with self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of alkanethiols with varying functional groups and chain lengths and use fluorescein (a small-molecule drug surrogate) to provide insight into the relationship between surface properties and molecular release. The results revealed that electrostatic interactions dominate the...
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