Influence of electrolyte and poloxamer 188 on the aggregation kinetics of solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs).

Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) have attracted increasing attention as colloidal drug carriers due to theirs advantages including low toxicity, drug targeting and modified release. However, undesired particle aggregation in aqueous dispersions would limit the applicability of SLNs for drug delivery. The purpose of the present article is to investigate the aggregation behavior of the SLNs and quantitatively evaluate how the concentration of NaCl and F68 affect the stability of the SLNs. The early stage aggregation kinetics of the SLNs was investigated over a wide range of NaCl concentrations by employing dynamic light scattering (DLS). In the presence of the NaCl, aggregation kinetics of the SLNs exhibited reaction-limited (slow) and diffusion-limited (fast) regimes. These results indicated that the aggregation behavior of these new nanoparticles can be well explained by the classical Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek (DLVO) theory. The critical coagulation concentration (CCC) of SLNs containing 0.0%, 0.1%...