Carboxylated graphene oxide functionalized with β-cyclodextrin-Engineering of a novel nanohybrid drug carrier

In this paper, we selected biocompatible carboxylated graphene oxide (GeneO-COOH) as a base material. The nanohybrid drug carriers composed of GeneO-COOH and cyclodextrin (β-CD), have been successfully synthesized through esterification and self-assembly technique. The nanohybrid drug carriers of GeneO-COO-β-CD were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), fourier infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TG), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and solubility experiments. Results indicated that the nanohybrid was obtained with GeneO-COOH forming the core and a large number of β-CD molecules forming the shell with a special structure. In the nanohybrid, the westerification between GeneO-COOH and β-CD led to the formation of covalent bonds, while adjacent β-CD molecules engineer an outer shell composed of 100 β-CD molecules (ca. 800 nm of thickness) in the form of a layer-by-layer self-assembly due to hydrogen-bonding interaction. The obtained novel nanohybrid drug carriers of GeneO-COO-β-CD possessed good dispersibility in water media and the solutions were found to remain stable for 12 months，providing a possibility for further applications in biology, medicine, agriculture and other fields.