Single-walled carbon nanotubes and more recently graphene have attracted considerable interest for the development of chemical sensors.  These carbon nanostructures are just one atom thick, and their electronic properties are extremely sensitive to adsorption of chemical species on their surface.  When chemically functionalized, these nanostructures exhibited a large and selective electronic response toward many analytes with potential applications in industrial sensors and medical diagnostics.  Carbon nanostructures can be also used as nano-carriers for applications in therapeutics.  They can significantly improve the pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of multiple therapeutic modalities.  Given possible pro-inflammatory and toxic effects of carbon nanotubes, understanding of their interactions with living systems is very important.  To address this, we also studied degradation of carbon nanomaterials with peroxidases including myeloperoxidase (MPO) by employing different analytical techniques (TEM, Raman, absorption spectroscopy and photoluminescence).  Our results indicate that there potentially exist in vivo mechanisms for carbon nanomaterial clearance.

Functionalized carbon nanostructures for chemical sensing and drug delivery applications

245th National Meeting (2013)

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