Fabrication of a hollow mesoporous silica hybrid to improve the targeting of a pesticide

By Yunhao Gao, Yanhui Zhang, Shun He, Yanan Xiao, Xueyin Qin, Donglin Li, Hongxu Ma, Y. Hong, Jianhong Li. Chemical Engineering Journal, 2019

139 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Nanomaterials offer a great opportunity to develop new strategies for designing stimuli-responsive controlled release formulations (CRFs) of pesticides. In this study, a pH sensitive controlled release system, poly(glycidyl methacrylate-co-acrylic acid) (P(GMA-AA)) grafted hollow mesoporous silica (HMS@P(GMA-AA) was fabricated. HMS was fabricated using a hard template and functionalized with 3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate. Then, P(GMA-AA) was grafted onto HMS by seeded precipitation polymerization. Abamectin (aba) was selected as the model pesticide to test the pH-sensitivity property. Detailed investigations showed that Aba@HMS@P(GMA-AA) exhibited a high pesticide-loading efficiency (33 wt%) and superior stability. The release of Aba from Aba@HMS@P(GMA-AA) was pH-dependent. In addition, Aba@HMS@P(GMA-AA) showed a strong combination with rice leaves, mainly benefitting from its low contact angle and high adhesion work on leaves. Bioactivity studies in a greenhouse and the field indicated that Aba@HMS@P(GMA-AA) was more toxic than Aba emulsifiable concentrate (Aba-EC) in controlling rice pest Cnaphalocrocis medinalis (Guenee) larvae, and it possessed long-term efficacy in practice. Importantly, there was no obvious influence on the growth of rice seedlings treated with Aba@HMS@P(GMA-AA). The results suggest that the proposed controlled release system is a promising candidate for the management of pests.

Subfields: Bioengineering, Biomedical Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/13387c7a64635f48de2157e79eef41154ec62e63