Controlled drug release from porous silicon nanomaterials

Porous silicon nanoparticles are an promising platform for drug delivery due to their high surface area and biodegradability. However, conventional drug loading methods like physical adsorption always result in premature drug release. This thesis develops a novel strategy to use stimulus-cleavable linker to tether small molecule drug doxorubicin to the surface of porous silicon nanoparticles through covalent bonding, and linker cleavage only occurs in the presence of corresponding stimulus to enable drug release. The utilisation of stimuli-cleavable linkers was confirmed to realise stimuli-responsive drug release behaviour on porous silicon nanoparticles.