Nanoporous carbon, its pharmaceutical applications and metal organic frameworks

Abstract

Nanoporous carbon materials have always presented a special interest due to their properties, which include adsorption (especially of gases), catalyst activity, fluorescence, and luminescence. Their porosity leads to a high surface area, making them suited for assisting processes, such as synthesis (especially carboxylation and electrolytic reduction), catalysis (particularly electrocatalysts and photocatalysis), and separation. Considering these features, carbon nanotubes, graphene oxide, and graphene quantum dots have been extensively investigated for pharmaceutical applications. Coming from either organic, inorganic or synthetic precursors, the nanoporous carbon composites are of great value as adsorbent for the removal of various pollutants. Apart from the removal of pollutants, nanopores serve to separate single stranded and double stranded DNA in solution and rapid DNA sequencing. While the size of the pores depends on the method used for preparation, from a usage standpoint, the nanopores are micropores (\(< \! 2 ~ \text {nm}\)), mesopores (\(2 \!- \! 50 ~\text {nm}\)) and macropores (\(> \! 50 ~ \text {nm}\)). The methods of investigation related with nanoporous carbon materials often include X ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X ray photoelectron spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis and X ray powder diffraction. This review summarizes the most recent studies in developing nanoporous carbon materials for various pharmacautical applications including bio-sensing, drug delivery, tissue engineering, biomedicine, gene transfection or cancer therapy. New porous carbon materials, including metal organic frameworks, carbon dots and nanotubes, have been detailed in this review.