ULTRA SHORT ELECTRIC PULSES REMOTE ACTIVATION OF LIPOSOMAL CAPSULES CONTAINING GOLD NANORODS

 

Yu. V. Gulyaev¹, V. A. Cherepenin¹, I. V. Taranov¹, V. A. Vdovin¹, A. A.Yaroslavov^{1, 2}, V. P. Kim^{1, 3}, G. B. Khomutov^{1, 3} 

1 – Kotel’nikov Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics of RAS

2 - Faculty of Chemistry, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University

3 – Faculty of Physics, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University

 

The paper is received on November 2, 2015

 

Abstract. The effect of decapsulation of nanocomposite liposomal capsules containing anisotropic gold nanoparticles (nanorods) caused by their treatment using ultrashort external electric field pulses have been discovered. The mechanism of the liposome capsule shell destruction in the pole areas of conductive gold nanorods caused by external pulsed electrical stimulation was described. An expression for the critical value of the applied pulsed electric field which determines the threshold for the onset of the decapsulation effect have been obtained. The theoretical calculated numerical value of threshold pulsed electric field was consistent with the obtained experimental data. It was shown experimentally that the observed decapsulation effect was caused by the presence of gold nanorods bound with the liposomal capsule shell, and that the decapsulation effect did not occur in liposomes in the absence of gold nanorods.

Keywords: capsule, liposomes, structure, gold nanorods, polyelectrolytes, pulse electric field.