%0 Journal Article
%T Recent Advancement in Functional Core-Shell Nanoparticles of Polymers: Synthesis, Physical Properties, and Applications in Medical Biotechnology
%A K. Santhosh Kumar
%A Vijay Bhooshan Kumar
%A Pradip Paik
%J Journal of Nanoparticles
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/672059
%X This paper covers the core-shell nanomaterials, mainly, polymer-core polymer shell, polymer-core metal shell, and polymer-core nonmetal shells. Herein, various synthesis techniques, properties, and applications of these materials have been discussed. The detailed discussion of the properties with experimental parameters has been carried out. The various characterization techniques for the core-shell nanostructure have also been discussed. Their physical and chemical properties have been addressed. The future aspects of such core-shell nanostructures for biomedical and various other applications have been discussed with a special emphasis on their properties. 1. Introduction The core-shell nanomaterials and nanostructures (Figure 1) have become an important research area since few decades due to their potential applications in various fields like catalysts, industrial and biomedical applications, and so forth [1¨C12]. The core-shell nanocomposites and nanostructure may be with different sizes and different shapes of core and shell thickness with different surface morphology. They may be spherical, centric, eccentric, star-like, or tubular in shape. Depending on the size and shape, their properties tune from material to another. Individual core-shell nanoparticles have various applications in diverse fields of medical biotechnology, like molecular bioimaging, drug delivery, cancer therapy, and so forth. Whenever the surface of the nanoparticles is modified by functional groups or molecules or coated with a thin layer of other materials (with different constituents), they show enhanced properties compared to the nonfunctionalized uncoated particles. There are different types of core-shell structure, like (1) metal-core and different metal shell, (2) metal-core and nonmetal shell, (3) metal-core and polymer shell, (4) nonmetal-core and nonmetal shell, (5) polymer-core and nonmetal shell and (6) polymer-core and polymer shell where the two polymers are different. For these six categories, the core and the shell materials may be reversed. Below is the schematic of core-shell nanoparticles. Figure 1: Schematic of a core-shell nanoparticle. Recently, much attention has been focused on core-shell metal nanoparticles based on gold, platinum, and palladium because their properties markedly differ from their bulk [1]. These metal core-shell nanoparticles exhibit size-induced quantum-size effects (i.e., electron confinement and surface effect) [1, 2] and can be exploited for a number of advanced functional applications as sensors, electronics, optoelectronics and
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jnp/2013/672059/