Nanoengineering of N-doped Mesoporous Carbon Nanoparticles with Adjustable Internal Cavities via Emulsion-Induced Assembly

Abstract

The preparation of mesoporous carbonaceous materials with particularly adjustable morphology is currently a hot area of research in mesoporous materials. Herein, a novel approach is reported for the construction of N-doped multicavity mesoporous carbon nanoparticles (NMMCNs) based on the “emulsion swelling–acid curing mechanism” using a nanoemulsion assembly method under a high-speed shearing force. Intriguingly, this approach adopted a novel acid (HCl) curing procedure. Impressively, the morphology evolution from an internal multicavity to a single cavity and then to a non-cavity interior structure could be accomplished by simply varying the synthesis parameters. Additionally, this synthesis approach ingeniously overcame the following problems: (i) technically, the employment of high temperatures and high pressures in traditional hydrothermal reaction curing environments is avoided; (ii) this approach removes the requirement for silicon coating, which provides a limited pyrolysis condition, to obtain a multi-chamber structure. Resveratrol (Res) is an insoluble natural medicine and was successfully loaded into NMMCNs, thereby the Res–NMMCNs delivery system was constructed. Importantly, the Res–NMMCNs delivery system could still retain the antitumor and antioxidant activity of Res in vitro.