Evaluation on redox-triggered degradation of thioether-bridged hybrid mesoporous organosilica nanoparticles

Abstract

Incorporation of degradable groups such as thioether bonds can make nanoparticles susceptible to be degraded by biological redox stimulus. Few studies have paid attention to effects of different surface properties of carriers on degradation behaviors between traditional mesoporous silica carriers and hybrid organosilica carriers, caused by inserted thioether groups. In this work, colloidal mesoporous silica (CMS) and hybrid colloidal mesoporous silica (HCMS) with different contents of doped thioether bonds are constructed to compare their physicochemical properties and degradability. With the increased amounts of doped thioether bonds, specific surface areas and Zeta potentials of HCMS nanoparticles decrease. Additionally, dynamic contact angle and the oil-water distribution coefficient are combined to characterize the hydrophobicity of CMS and HCMS nanoparticles. Therefore, after incorporating thioether bonds into the structure of carriers, the degradation behavior of HCMS nanoparticles in the medium were the result of weighing the advantages of degradable thioether bonds and disadvantages of decreased specific surface area and enhanced hydrophobicity of carriers. Experimental results displayed that, in the high concentration of reductive environment, HCMS carriers with doping proper proportion of thioether groups showed the fast degradation rate due to the cleaved thioether bonds as the dominant factor. The present work breaks the common views that all thioether bonds-bridged organosilica could become excellent biodegradable carriers, providing an objective perspective to evaluate the degradability of hybrid organosilica carriers.