Design and engineering of superparamegnetic nanoparticles

In the past decade the study of superparamagnetic nanoparticles has been intensively developed also for technological application: among others biomedical application as magnetically assisted drug delivery, contrast agents in MRI, cell separation, hyperthermia therapy. All of these applications require that the nanoparticles have high magnetization, and abovefuthermore all these applications also need a peculiar surface coating which has to be nontoxic and biocompatible. Among various magnetic nanoparticles, magnetite has attracted growing interest in design magnetic nanostructure materials due to its existing properties such as supeparamagnetism, high field irreversibility and high saturation field. Silica is a versatile platform with many intrinsic features, such as low toxicity, proper design and derivatization yields particularly stable colloids even in physiological conditions. In this work, core-shell magnetite/silica (Fe3O4@SiO2) nano structures were designed, synthesized and functionalized with fluorescent dyes. The coating process was applied to magnetite nanoparticles dispersed in an aqueous solution.