Investigating the effect of the environment (water-ethanol ratio) on the absorption spectrum of anthracene for use in photodynamic therapy using copper sulfide nanoparticles

Today, common protocols in cancer treatments, such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, are hardly satisfactory due to their specific drawbacks such as surgical wound, chemotherapy drug resistance, and some chronic symptoms of radiation therapy, etc. In the meantime, photodynamic therapy has received much attention as a new method for cancer treatment with fewer side effects.

Methods & Materials:

 In this research, copper sulfide nanoparticles were made using an easy and low-cost method and its ability to detect singlet oxygen in different environments (water-ethanol ratio) was investigated.

In order to investigate the structural and optical properties of copper sulfide nanoparticles, X-ray diffraction analysis, transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and ultraviolet-visible spectrum were analyzed. 808 nm laser (power 1 watt) was used as the radiation source. All analyzes confirmed the formation of mentioned nanoparticles and the size of copper sulfide nanoparticles was Environ 10 nm.

Experimental studies show that copper sulfide nanoparticles have an excellent photodynamic effect under 808 nm laser radiation, which can effectively produce singlet oxygen to destroy cancer cells. Therefore, copper sulfide nanoparticles can be used as a biocompatible and robust photosensitive material for efficient photodynamic therapy. Investigations show that increasing the ratio of water to ethanol decreases the accuracy of the anthracene probe in detecting singlet oxygen in the photodynamic therapy phenomenon. Therefore, ethanol solvent was selected as the best solvent for singlet oxygen production. In addition, the reproducibility and stability of the results were investigated in the ethanol medium, and the obtained results confirm the reproducibility of singlet oxygen production using copper sulfide nanoparticles.