A team led by Jeff Weldon, Carnegie Mellon University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, recently reported a novel smart drug delivery system utilizing the nanostructured pores in AAO membranes.  The team utilized InRedox 40nm AAO membranes and applied a thin conductive Cr layer to the membrane. The composite membrane could then be electronically gated to control the diffusion of molecules based upon charge. Such field-effect gating membranes hold potential as novel “smart” drug delivery devices where dose can be precisely tuned via the field-effect gating mechanism.

Electrically Gated Nanoporous Membranes, Sungho Kim, Ece Isenbike Ozalp, Mohamed Darwish, and Jeffrey A. Weldon,  2017 IEEE 12th International Conference on Nano/Micro Engineered and Molecular Systems (NEMS), pp. 766-769, IEEE.