A recipe for optimizing TiO2 nanoparticles for drug delivery applications

Abstract

The size and shape of Titanium Dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2 NPs) substantially affect their drug encapsulation efficiency, circulation time and agglomeration in order to have effective drug-delivery applications for which the NPs in the size range 20–150 nm and spherical morphology are considered to be the most suitable. The basic idea is to synthesize small-sized rutile titania NPs. Since, rutile phase is associated with bigger size of the NPs, obtaining both small-size as well as rutile TiO2 NPs is a challenge in the synthesis process. In this report, we are able to optimize the synthesis of spherical rutile titania NPs by adjusting the molarity as 0.3 M, a pH value of 1.0 and calcination temperature of 800°C. XRD and HR-TEM confirmed the synthesis of 25–28 nm sized TiO2 NPs. This is the optimum size range as it is expected that the size of the NPs won't increase beyond 150 nm even after drug loading and various surface modifications. Furthermore, it is suggested that the recipe shared in this paper for synthesizing TiO2 NPs is reproducible.

Keywords

• Molarity
• Green synthesis
• Calcination temperature
• Drug delivery
• TiO2 nanoparticles