Self-assembled Smart Nanocoating and Colloidal Materials for Biomedical Application

Creation of novel and smart materials is one of the driving forces for the evolution of coating and encapsulation technologies. A challenge of materials engineering is the controlled assembly of purposefully designed molecules, or ensembles of molecules, into nanoand micrometer-scale structures to provide increasingly precise control at molecular levels, over the structure, properties and function of materials. Layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembly technique provides opportunities to create such advanced materials since its universal character does not impose any restriction on the type of polyelectrolyte. New functionalities were imposed on multilayered assemblies by introducing novel structures and/or incorporating functional materials. Liposomal drug formulations offer the advantage of reducing drug toxicities, but the insufficient morphological stability of traditional liposomes may limit their applications. Hence, highly stable anticoagulant coating was constructed by LbL self-assembly of heparin and diazoresin incombination of in situ photocrosslinking. A novel super-stable and freestanding hybrid nanoliposome (partially ceramicor silica-coated liposome) was fabricated using self-assembly and sol gel strategy to overcome general problems associated with current liposome technology.