Investigating the effect of particles density on behavior of inorganic nanoparticles under convective flow

Nanotechnology provides great advantages for drug delivery. Different methods are available for nanoparticle drug delivery which some use convective flow. Besides this, nanoparticles will sometimes face convective flow in the body, for instance in the blood stream or lung inhalation.Convective-based drug delivery systems (DDSs) use the benefits of convective flow. Drug release profile independent form the solubility and size of molecules, zero order release and the possibility of delivery of macro molecules and nanoparticles are some of these advantages which makes them interesting for controlled release of nanoparticles. We have previously studied the effect of nanoparticles and environment properties on delivering nanoparticles under convective flow using non-metal nanoparticles. The present study models convective-based DDSs to investigate the convective behavior of metal nanoparticles including silver, gold and zinc oxide, which have different densities, at room temperature and their phase separation were monitored over 48 h using size distribution studies. Results showed significant phase separation for gold nanoparticles (as a high density metal) during the first 6h of experiment. Zinc oxide nanoparticles (as low density metal) also showed phase separation. Pattern of changes in size of silver nanoparticles which have the density between zinc oxide and gold, also showed phase separation during 6th to 12th hour and then remained almost unchanged. These results indicate that density can severely affect convective metal nanoparticles’ delivery.

کلیدواژه ها:

Convection ، Convective flow ، Nanotechnology ، Metal nanoparticles ، Models