Thermo and pH Dual - Actuating Smart Porous Anodic Aluminum for Controllable Drug Release

A highly effective dual-stimuli responsive porous anodic aluminum (PAA) nanomembrane is designed and fabricated for controllable and sustainable drug release. By a two-step electrochemical anodization process, the nanochannel arrays in PAA membrane are divided into two separated parts. The first part is modified by copolymer-liposome (colipid), which acts as the thermo and pH dual-stimuli responsive capping material. The other part is used as the drug loading core. The liposome in capping layer has excellent biocompatibility, and the nanochannels array can provide a high drug loading capacity. Taking dexamethasone as the model drug, the experiment results show that the fabricated nanochannels can be well tuned to open or close state upon pH or temperature stimuli, which allows the controllable and sustainable drug release. The present work is of significant importance for constructing smart and intelligent drug carrier and release systems for clinical applications.