Vesa-Pekka Lehto
Porous silicon is a nanostructured material with a wide variety of applications, for example drug delivery, biological imaging, photonics, chemical sensing. Porous silicon is typically produced by electrochemically etching the pore structure into single crystal silicon. Depending on the etching parameters a wide range of structures can be produced with varying pore size, depth, porosity, surface area and pore structure.
Our main research interest is in using porous silicon in drug delivery. For this purpose we produce porous silicon with pore size in the range of 10 - 100 nm. The pore surface is tailored by surface modifications to exhibit the desired properties such as hydrophobicity, hydrophilicity, positive or negative surface charge, acidity and basicity. It is also possible to link biologically active molecules onto the surface.
Drug materials are loaded into the pores from a solution or by melting. By loading the drugs inside the pores it is possible to enhance the dissolution of drugs or to control the delivery of drugs. Porous silicon nanoparticles are studied for targeted delivery of drugs.