Facile one-pot synthesis of PEGylated monodisperse mesoporous silica nanoparticles with controllable particle sizes

In this work, we describe the one-pot synthesis of PEGylated mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) with uniform shape, tunable sizes, and narrow size distributions. The size of these nanoparticles can be controlled from 49 nm to 98 nm by simply varying the concentration of triethanolamine during the base-catalyzed sol-gel reaction. Particles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, dynamic light scattering, Fourier transform infrared spectrometry, thermogravimetric analysis, and nitrogen adsorption-desorption measurements. These PEGylated MSNs exhibited excellent long-term stability in biological media, which ensures their potential applications in drug delivery. (C) 2013 Quan Zhang and Jian Yin. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Chemical Society. All rights reserved.