Carbon nanotubes provide an excellent, nanosize platform for biomedical application. The empty cavities, high surface area, ultimate toxicity and the possibility of independent modification of external and internal part of the tubes give promising opportunities to use them both for therapeutic and diagnostic applications.
In this thesis the research toward the fast covalent functionalization of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is described. To address this issue we dedicated our efforts to find the most convenient methodology to decorate CNTs already filled with metal halides. The main attention was focused on quick methods of derivatization, necessary to increase the dispersibility of CNTs and to create a new platform for further binding of biomolecules.
Considering the structure of CNTs and the limited reactivity of their sidewall, in the first part of the work the 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reactions were exploited as a common reaction on aromatic system. Various dipoles, as alternative to the already studied azometine ylides, were proposed. Another functionalization investigated has been the arylation reaction. Both thermal heating and microwave (MW) irradiation were considered as one of the fastest and efficient methods of functionalization.
In the second part of the thesis the attention has been focused on the functionalization of filled carbon nanotubes. The objective was the application of already optimized methodology of covalent functionalization on carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) filled with different metal halides.
In the final experiment the settled conditions were used for functionalization of carbon nanocapsules containing the isotope of samarium 153Sm. The obtained material was employed for biodistribution studies in vivo, in mice.
