• Macromolecular Research
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.167-175
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• 2005

This review explores recent works involving the use of the self-assembled nanoparticles of bile acid-modified glycol chitosans (BGCs) as a new drug carrier for cancer therapy. BGC nanoparticles were produced by chemically grafting different bile acids through the use of l-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)-carbodiimide (EDC). The precise control of the size, structure, and hydrophobicity of the various BGC nanoparticles could be achieved by grafting different amounts of bile acids. The BGC nanoparticles so produced formed nanoparticles ranging in size from 210 to 850 nm in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS, pH=7.4), which exhibited substantially lower critical aggregation concentrations (0.038-0.260 mg/mL) than those of other low-molecular-weight surfactants, indicating that they possess high thermodynamic stability. The SOC nanoparticles could encapsulate small molecular peptides and hydrophobic anticancer drugs with a high loading efficiency and release them in a sustained manner. This review also highlights the biodistribution of the BGC nanoparticles, in order to demonstrate their accumulation in the tumor tissue, by utilizing the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect. The different approaches used to optimize the delivery of drugs to treat cancer are also described in the last section.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.33 no.12
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• pp.525-529
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• 2023

β-Ga₂O₃ has become the focus of considerable attention as an ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor following the successful development of bulk single crystals using the melt growth method. Accordingly, homoepitaxy studies, where the interface between the substrate and the epilayer is not problematic, have become mainstream and many results have been published. However, because the cost of homo-substrates is high, research is still mainly at the laboratory level and has not yet been scaled up to commercialization. To overcome this problem, many researchers are trying to grow high quality Ga₂O₃ epilayers on hetero-substrates. We used diluted SiH4 gas to control the doping concentration during the heteroepitaxial growth of β-Ga₂O₃ on c-plane sapphire using metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). Despite the high level of defect density inside the grown β-Ga₂O₃ epilayer due to the aggregation of random rotated domains, the carrier concentration could be controlled from 1 × 10¹⁹ to 1 × 10¹⁶ cm^-3 by diluting the SiH4 gas concentration. This study indicates that β-Ga₂O₃ hetero-epitaxy has similar potential to homo-epitaxy and is expected to accelerate the commercialization of β-Ga₂O₃ applications with the advantage of low substrate cost.