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A novel composite material consisting of a silica aerogel core coated by a poly(ethylene) glycol (PEG) hydrogel was developed. The potential of this novel composite as a drug delivery system was tested with ketoprofen as a model drug due to its solubility in supercritical carbon dioxide. The results indicated that both drug loading capacity and drug release profiles could be tuned by changing hydrophobicity of aerogels, and that drug loading capacity increased with decreased hydrophobicity, while slower release rates were achieved with increased hydrophobicity. Furthermore, higher concentration of PEG diacrylate in the prepolymer solution of the hydrogel coating delayed the release of the drug which can be attributed to the lower permeability at higher PEG diacrylate concentrations. The novel composite developed in this study can be easily implemented to achieve the controlled delivery of various drugs and/or proteins for specific applications. (C) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A:, 2012.

The surfaces of monolithic silica aerogels were rendered hydrophobic using hexamethyldisilazane (HMDS) as surface modification agent and scCO 2 as solvent. The treatment led to hydrophobic silica aerogels which are as transparent as untreated aerogels. The effects of HMDS concentration in the fluid phase and the reaction time were investigated and the contact angles were found to be 130° at different conditions. FTIR spectra indicated a reduction in hydrophilic surface silanol groups and the emergence of hydrophobic CH 3 groups. The bubble point pressures of the HMDS–CO 2 system were obtained at temperatures 298.2 K, 313.2 K, 327.7 K and 342 K at various concentrations. At a fixed temperature, the bubble point pressure decreased as the concentration of HMDS increased. At a fixed composition, bubble point pressure increased as the temperature increased. The bubble point pressures were modeled using the Peng–Robinson Stryjek–Vera Equation of State (PRSVEOS) and compared well with the experimental data.