Mesoporous and microporous materials have recently received a great attention for their potential use in biomedical applications. The use of silica as scaffold is particularly appealing due to the optical transparency and easy preparation and functionalization. In our laboratories we have devoted a lot of effort to develop strategies to control the functionalization of zeolites and mesoporous nanomaterials. Asymmetric functionalization has been very recently achieved and will be illustrated. Also we have shown that the particles can be decorated with different biocompatible molecules and are able to perfom drug and DNA or RNA delivery. The delivery can be probed by a kinetic analyses after the nanoparticles internalization. In particular using confocal fluorescent microscopy it is possible to follow the release of each single component as well as the positioning of the nanocontainers in real time and space.Finally a new interesting development for the use of the pores as guides to organize in 1D electrically active molecules will be demonstrated. In particular the alignment of electro- or magnetoactive molecules inside the narrow channels of a zeolite L, resulted in the formation of molecular wires. The electrical conductivity measured can be foreseen as possible tool to address the release of the entrapped molecules or as a signaling that can be transferred to the edge of the porous material. Here, we report a very high magnetoresistance at room temperature in molecular wires. The electrical measurements on the 1D molecular wires were performed in a UHV conducting-probe atomic force microscope (CP-AFM). The molecular wire length is tunable between 30 and 100 nm and the resistance scales accordingly. An ultra-high (> 2000%) room-temperature magnetoresistance is observed for only a few mT. This work has been supported by ERC Advanced Grant no. 247365

Light and electrical responsive porous materials

247th National Meeting (2014)

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