Preparation of super-long aligned mesoporous bioactive glass tubes by an aligned porous polystyrene template

Abstract

An aligned porous polystyrene (PS) template with a pore diameter of 20 µm and millimeter scale length was prepared for the first time. Super-long aligned mesoporous bioactive glass tubes (AMBGTs) were prepared with this new PS template as an example. AMBGTs had a millimeter scale length, a specific surface area of 240.98 m2·g−1, a mesoporous volume of 0.3 cm3·g−1 and an average mesoporous diameter of 5.4 nm. They showed excellent in vitro bioactivity. The drug loading capacity of ibuprofen (IBU) reached 50.7% and the encapsulation efficiency was 63.4%. The kinetics fitted a first-order kinetic model and Fick diffusion mechanism. AMBGTs could be a potential material for preparing bone tissue engineering and drug delivery. More importantly, the successful preparation of AMBGTs confirmed that replicating the aligned porous PS template was an effective strategy to prepare super-long aligned one-dimensional materials. More aligned one-dimensional materials could be obtained by this strategy.