ABSTRACT
Recently, ordered mesoporous silica materials have gained considerable attention as carriers for drugs because of their stable mesoporous structure, tunable pore size, high speciϐic surface area with abundant Si-OH active bonds on the pore walls, nontoxic nature, well-deϐined surface properties, and good biocompatibility [13-21]. Mesoporous silica materials have been intensively studied as host for various guest molecules based on their easy surface-modiϐication property [22-25]. Magnetic-functionalized mesoporous materials have showed feasible applications in biological ϐields, such as drug delivery [26-28], magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) [29, 30], bioseparation [31], catalysis [32], and stimuli-responsive controlled release delivery [33, 34]. It is worth noting that mesoporous materials functionalized with photoluminescence (PL) may have potential applications in the ϐields of drug delivery, disease diagnosis and therapy [35-40]. This is because these controlled-drug-delivery systems not only have high pore volumes for the storage and delivery of drugs but also possess PL properties that can be tracked to evaluate the efϐiciency of the drug release. Therefore, the design of mesoporous materials functionalized with PL properties or multifunctionalized with magnetic and PL properties play a key role in achieving this application. Much research attention has been paid to the rare-earth ions, since they bear unique electronic and optical characteristics arising from their 4f electrons. The luminescence features of rare-earth ions include high luminescence quantum yield, narrow bandwidth, longlived emission, large-stokes shifts, ligand-dependent luminescence sensitization, which have received startling interest because of the continuously expanding need for luminescent materials meeting the stringent requirements of telecommunication, lighting, electroluminescent devices, (bio-) analytical sensors, bioimaging set-ups, and solar cells [41-44]. In this chapter, we focus on the functionalized porous materials and their applications for controlled drug release, which include luminescent YVO4:Eu3+ and CaWO4:Ln (Ln = Eu3+, Tb3+, Dy3+, Sm3+, Er3+) phosphors-deposited mesoporous silica materials, europiumdoped mesoporous hydroxyapatite (HAp) and mesoporous bioactive glass, self-activated luminescent porous materials, upconversion (UC)-functionalized core-shell composites, hollow luminescent porous spheres, magnetic mesoporous silica composites, mutlifunctionalized nanocomposites with magnetic and ultraviolet (UV)- excitable (or upconversion) luminenscence properties. These functionalized porous materials demonstrate controlled release properties in in vitro assays.
