Interaction behavior of curcumin encapsulated onto functionalized SBA-15 as an efficient carrier and release in drug delivery

In this work, mesoporous silica SBA-15 was prepared and functionalized with amine groups (i.e., NH 2 ) to form NH 2 /SBA-15. The curcumin (CUR) was encapsulated into the surface and pore of NH 2 /SBA-15 to create CUR@NH 2 /SBA-15 as an efficient carrier in drug delivery systems (DDSs). The three samples (i.e., SBA-15, NH 2 /SBA-15, and CUR@NH 2 /SBA-15) were characterized. The study investigated the effect of the carrier dose, initial CUR concentration, pH, and contact time on the CUR loading efficiency (DLE%) via adsorption. The best DLE% for the SBA-15 and NH 2 /SBA-15 were found to be 45% and 89.7%, respectively. The Langmuir isotherm had a greater correlation coefficient (R 2 ) of 0.998 for SBA-15. A pseudo-second-order kinetic model seemed to fit well with R 2  = 0.9998 for SBA-15 and R 2  = 0.9993 for NH 2 /SBA-15. A phosphate buffer solution (PBS) with a pH of 7.4 was utilized to study the CUR release behavior. As a result, the full release after 72 h was found to have a maximum of 82.6% and 41.2% for SBA-15 and NH 2 /SBA-15, respectively. The first-order, Weibull, Hixson-Crowell, Korsmeyer-Peppas, and Higuchi kinetic release models were applied. The Weibull model estimated the kinetics of the CUR release from SBA-15 and NH 2 /SBA-15 with R 2  = 0.814 and 0.808, respectively.