Precisely controlling the surface roughness of silica nanoparticles for enhanced functionalities and applications

Colloids with rough topography demonstrate more complex interactions and tremendous potential in industrial applications. However, relevant studies suffer from a range of challenges, including cumbersome synthesis, complex characterization, and very limited functionalities. A comprehensive study of rough nanoparticles can not only broaden our understanding of rough colloids, but also help to avoid some of their detrimental impacts in real life (e.g., clogging and pumping failures in slurry processing).A facile route to precisely control the surface roughness of silica nanoparticles and a highly efficient method to characterize the surface roughness were developed respectively. The fabricated particles can be applied for the immobilization of metal nanostructures; their cytotoxic effects and the capability to be used as a drug-delivery vehicle were also evaluated.Modifying the addition time of precursors (i.e., TEOS and MPTMS) can precisely control the surface roughness of silica nanoparticles. The developed characterization method based on TEM observations allows statistical analyses on a large number of particles, and therefore features very reasonable accuracy. These rough particles behave like microporous materials, where the loading strategy is closely related to their surface roughness. Medium rough particles are promising carriers of metal nanostructures, while the roughest ones are excellent candidate for doxorubicin delivery to cancer cells.