Characterization of a phospholipid bilayer entrapped into non-porous silica nanospheres

Abstract

Using liposomes as templates is one of the paths leading to the synthesis of silica spherical particles. In these particles, the silica wall is assembled onto the external surface of the liposome. Generally, the walls of the resulting silica spheres are porous and in the specific case of liposome templating, the exact state of the trapped lipids is undocumented. In this work we describe the characterization of a new non-porous silica material obtained by templating liposomes. We show that the liposomes trapped in the nanospheres retain most of the structural and dynamic properties of the free liposomes. Also, as a consequence of the non-porous nature of the silica cladding the inner aqueous pool is permanently retained. To the best of our knowledge, silica nanospheres with such promising properties have so far not been obtained. These properties make these hybrid silica nano-spheres, referred to as liposils, potentialy good candidates for the storage and delivery of drugs.