Porous Silicon for Drug Delivery

Dear Colleagues,

Porous silicon is an outstandingly versatile material due to its excellent mechanical, thermal, and photonic properties, and is currently being explored in fields so dissimilar such optoelectronics, gas sensing, energy storage, and biotechnology. Although the material was first reported in the mid-1950s, it took over 30 years to attract significant interest in the biomedical field. This newfound interest was especially due to the discovery of porous silicon’s bioactive nature and biodegradability. Porous silicon’s large pore volume, together with its large surface area, have also enabled this structure to act as a reservoir for loading a wide array of different compounds of interest, via selective tailoring of size and surface chemistries of the pores. The confinement of drugs within macro and mesopores heralded new ways to modulate the molecules’ thermodyamic arrangements and led to new insights into crystallization and amorphisation processes, which are critical for the material’s pharmaceutical processability. Many pharmaceutical applications are further expanded by porous silicon’s intrinsic luminescence, which originates from quantum confinement effects, together with the ease of labelling of its surface with radiotracers and fluorescent molecules for theranostics and imaging purposes.

This Special Issue focuses on recent developments in the area of drug delivery using porous silicon in its many aspects, covering emerging pharmaceutically acceptable routes of synthesis for the material, as well as functionalisation strategies for its surface. Challenges in its clinical translation and pharmaceutical processability will also be discussed, together with opportunities and current commercialisation efforts.

Dr. Luis M. Bimbo
Guest Editor

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