Oxidized carbon particles from styrene

Abstract

It has been reported the spherical shape of oxidized carbon nanoparticulates shows higher ability to penetrate phospholipid bilayer membrane than tubular and sheet shapes. However, the effect of the particle size on this membrane penetration ability have never been investigated. In this work, we synthesized various sizes of oxidized carbon spheres through a four steps process. Firstly, we adjusted the surfactants and styrene concentrations to prepare polystyrene of various sizes. Then, the polystyrene particles of selected sizes were hypercrosslinked via Frieldel-Craft alkylation reaction. After that, hypercrosslinked polystyreneparticles were pyrolyzed under N2 atmosphere to obtain carbon nanospheres of various sizes. The obtained carbon particles of selected sizes were then oxidized using the mixture of KMnO4, H2SO4 and NaNO3. Ability of the resulted oxidized carbon particles to induce membrane leakage of cell-size liposome was then investigated by sugar leak experiment. The results show that oxidized carbon particle with the size of around 140 nm can most effectively induce membrane leakage.