Mesoporous carbon encapsulated zinc oxide nanorods derived from plant species ‘Argyreia sharadchandrajii’ for live cell imaging of drug delivery and multimodal bioactivities

Abstract

In this report, we develop a drug delivery system by binding Argyreia sharadchandrajii (A. S.) biomass-derived carbon encapsulated on the surface of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods by a two-step method. Firstly, we prepared mesoporous carbon (MC) by pyrolysis under an inert atmosphere at 800 °C for 3 h. Simultaneously, hydrothermal synthesis of ZnO nanorods was performed, followed by composite formation with surface modification of ZnO nanorods with carbon particles. The physicochemical properties of the mesoporous carbon encapsulated ZnO nanorods were studied by using X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray analysis, Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis, etc. The mesoporous carbon encapsulated ZnO nanorods revealed a wurtzite hexagonal crystal structure. The SEM image showed the mesoporous carbon covered on the surface of the ZnO nanorod-like morphology with an average diameter of 300–400 nm and an average length of 1.2 μm. Based on these characterizations, we have reported several bioactivities like antioxidant, antimicrobial, anticancer, and drug delivery. The carbon/ZnO composite (C@Z) loaded with doxorubicin (DOX) (C@Z-DOX) manifested sustained drug release to live cancer cells. Taking into consideration the ubiquitous availability of carbon sources and the facile synthetic strategy of composites for promising drug delivery studies and bioactivities, this approach could acquire remarkable results in biomedical research.