After a decade of R&D, nanotechnology has reshaped the traditional thinking of using ceramics for drug delivery. Although drug delivery has been a polymer-dominated field, the blossoming of nanotechnology means that ceramic materials are now showing much promise for numerous drug delivery applications. Typically, nanotechnology is defined as the use of materials and systems whose structures and components exhibit novel and significantly changed properties when control is gained at the nanoscale. For ceramics, this means fabricating ceramics whose grain or particle sizes are within the range 1nm to 100nm.Nanophase ceramics already have been widely used in a broad spectrum of biomedical applications, and now drug delivery is one of the fastest emerging and developing arenas for nano-ceramics, drawing increasing attention over the past few years, as explained here.
