New Intelligent Material Offers Many Potential Uses From Drug Delivery To Energy Storage

SINGAPORE – Intelligent materials, the latest revolution in the field of materials science, can adapt their properties depending on changes in their surroundings. They can be used in everything from self-healing mobile phone screens, to shape-shifting airplane wings, and targeted drug delivery.

Delivering drugs to a specific target inside the body using intelligent materials is particularly important for diseases like cancer, as the smart material only releases the drug payload when it detects the presence of a cancer cell, leaving the healthy cells unharmed.

Now, researchers from the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials (CA2DM) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have created a new class of intelligent materials. It has the structure of a two-dimensional (2D) material, but behaves like an electrolyte – and could be a new way to deliver drugs within the body.

Just like traditional electrolytes, these new “2D-electrolytes” dissociate their atoms in different solvents, and become electrically charged. Furthermore, the arrangement of these materials can be controlled by external factors, such as pH and temperature, which is ideal for targeted drug delivery. The 2D-electrolytes also show promise for other applications that require a material to be responsive to environmental changes, such as artificial muscles and energy storage.

The team behind the 2D-electrolytes is led by Professor Antonio Castro Neto, Director of CA2DM, and comprised researchers from CA2DM, as well as the NUS Department of Physics, and the NUS Department of Materials Science and Engineering.