Mesoporous nanosized metal-oxides based on silica can be used as effective procoagulant materials to speed-up external blood clotting. To extend the applications of these materials, we present the model of scaffold-threshold TiO2 nanoparticles as a promising material to treat internal bleeding. SiO2-structures may not ideally treat internal bleeding because of their procoagulant nature. Instead, we propose to study mesoporous TiO2 as a comparable anticoagulant scaffold. Our goal is to design functionalized nanoparticles with a defined amount of coagulant factors above the threshold amount responsible for causing blood clotting. By loading the particles with these factors a localization of the bleeding site should be obtained. Mesoporous TiO2   nanoparticles were made via sol-gel methods using different structure-directing agents. The spherical particles with various diameters showed high surface areas and pore sizes of about 5 nm. To achieve a localized clotting at the hemorrhage site, the particles were loaded with polyphosphate via Lewis acid-base interaction or covalent bonding and were characterized using zeta potential measurements and infrared spectroscopy to investigate the surface functionalization.

In the future, the most suitable triggering agent and its threshold must be determined to ensure localized clotting at the bleeding site. In addition, we must study the effect of surface area and pore size on loading and coagulation.