A new approach for the stabilisation of double-walled carbon nanotubes in aqueous media was developed. A low molecular weight surfactant was used in the first stage for the debundling of the nanotubes followed by substitution with a higher molecular weight surfactant or non-ionic surfactants. Dispersions were characterized by optical density measurements, SEM and DLS. The presence of remaining low molecular weight surfactant was investigated by FT-IR. Double walled carbon nanotube dispersions showed good dispersion stability and non-detectable amounts of the initial surfactant, which was completely removed. Such a method could be useful for preparation of stable aqueous dispersions of carbon nanotubes with low concentration of surfactants, which is especially important for toxicity studies.
The increasing engineering of biomedical devices and the design of drug-delivery platforms enriched by graphene-based components demand careful investigations of the impact of graphene-related materials (GRMs) on the nervous system. In addition, the enhanced diffusion of GRM-based products and technologies that might favor the dispersion in the environment of GRMs nanoparticles urgently requires the potential neurotoxicity of these compounds to be addressed. One of the challenges in providing definite evidence supporting the harmful or safe use of GRMs is addressing the variety of this family of materials, with GRMs differing for size and chemistry. Such a diversity impairs reaching a unique and predictive picture of the effects of GRMs on the nervous system. Here, by exploiting the thermal reduction of graphene oxide nanoflakes (GO) to generate materials with different oxygen/carbon ratios, we used a high-throughput analysis of early-stage zebrafish locomotor behavior to investigate if modifications of a specific GRM chemical property influenced how these nanomaterials affect vertebrate sensory-motor neurophysiology—exposing zebrafish to GO downregulated their swimming performance. Conversely, reduced GO (rGO) treatments boosted locomotor activity. We concluded that the tuning of single GRM chemical properties is sufficient to produce differential effects on nervous system physiology, likely interfering with different signaling pathways.
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