Facile preparation of self-assembled hydrogel-like GdPO4•H2O nanorods

Of the methods employed in the preparation of one-dimensional lanthanide phosphate (LnPO(4)) nanorods/nanowires, such as GdPO4, the hydrothermal method has been mainly used as a synthetic route. In this Study, we report a facile low-temperature solution approach to prepare GdPO4 center dot H2O nanorods by simply refluxing GdCl3 and KH2PO4 for only 15 min at 88 degrees C, an approach that can easily be scaled up by increasing the reagent amounts. We observed a highly viscous macroscopic hydrogel-like material when we mixed as-prepared GdPO4 center dot H2O nanomaterials with H2O. Hydrogels are an important class of biomaterials. Their building blocks, normally formed from protein-, peptide-, polymer-, and lipid-based materials, offer three-dimensional scaffolds for drug delivery, tissue engineering, and biosensors. Our preliminary results showed that GdPO4-H2O hydrogels could be used for encapsulation and drug release, and that they were biocompatible, acting as scaffolds to foster cell proliferation. These findings suggested that they might have biomedical uses. Our findings may lead to the creation of other inorganic nanomaterial-based hydrogels apart from the organic and biomolecular protein-, peptide-, polymer-, and lipid-based building blocks.