Design, Preparation And Performance Study Of A Novel Fluorinated Graphene-based Anticancer Drug Carrier

Graphene has aroused extensive attention in industrial applications due to its novel physical and chemical properties in recent years.It is worth to mention that the development of graphene derivatives with specific functions has attracted the interest of many researchers.Particularly,functionalized graphene oxide is widely studied and utilized as drug carriers in biomedical field.Fluorinated graphene?FG?,a derivative of graphene,has many excellent properties such as low surface energy,high hydrophobicity and wide band-gap,etc.It has potential applications in many fields,such as nano-electronic,optoelectronic and thermoelectric devices.In this work,we mainly studied the preparation,characterization and cytotoxicity of functionalized fluorinated graphene,which is helpful to exploring its potential application in further cancer therapy.Fluorinated graphene oxide?FGO?with good water-soluble is pre-prepared from hydroxyl functionalized fluorinated graphite,which changes FG from hydrophobic to hydrophilic.Then,the samples are easily obtained by the modified Hummers method and further ultrasonic exfoliation.The surface morphology and elements of the synthesized samples are studied by Transmission electron microscope?TEM?,X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy?XPS?,X-ray diffraction?XRD?,Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy?FTIR?.Like graphene oxide,FGO has large surface area and oxygen-containing functional group.What's more,the layered structure also provides an advantage for the drug carrier.Carbon material and its derivative are also a kind of excellent photothermal material.Therefore,FGO exhibits excellent photothermal efficiency under near infrared irradiation?NIR,808 nm?.The temperature of FGO?100 ?g/mL?can reach 51 oC at a power density of 1.6 W/cm2 for 600 seconds.This result shows that FGO holds great promise in cancer photothermal therapy.In this study,we have studied the cytotoxicity of FGO,the doxorubicin?DOX?loading ability and its release behavior.It is found that cell viability of Hela cell remains above 86 % even with a very high concentration of 200 ?g/mL.The large layered structure of FGO makes it has high loading capacity and the maximum drug loading capacity can reach to 2.18 mg/mg.Besides,FGO shows obviously p H responsiveness and sustain drug release performance in vitro release behavior.To improve the targeting of drug carrier,the novel FGO/Fe₃O₄ nanocomposite is successfully synthesized and DOX is also loaded.The toxicity,photothermal and cytotoxicity of this nanocomposite is further systematically investigated,and compared to FGO and Fe₃O₄,the FGO/Fe₃O₄ nanocomposites exhibit superior photothermal behavior.The temperature of FGO/Fe₃O₄?70 ?g/mL?can easily reach 52.2 oC at a low power density of 1 W/cm2 for 600 seconds.It is found that the cytotoxicity of Hela cell remains low values even at a very high concentration of 200 ?g/mL.The cell experiment clearly indicates that the composite shows obviously sustaining drug release performance.The cancer-killing property of the composite is greatly improved under the NIR irradiation.This study demonstrates that the constructed FGO/Fe₃O₄ nanocomposite holds great promise in future cancer photo-chemotherapy.