Magnetite nanostructures: One-pot synthesis, superparamagnetic property and application in magnetic resonance imaging

Abstract

Diverse magnetite (Fe3O4) nanostructures have been fabricated by a facile, one-pot, economic and environment-friendly solvent thermal process simply using ethanol as the solvent, including regular magnetite sub-micrometer spheres composed of partially ordered array of magnetite nanoparticles, hollow magnetite aggregates and monodispersed magnetite nanoparticles. The prepared magnetite nanoparticles possess distinctively superparamagnetic behavior, showing great potential in biotechnological applications. Importantly, this general synthetic strategy could be extended to prepare other spinel ferrite nanoparticles such as CoFe2O4. A novel hybrid micelle self-assembly mechanism was introduced and demonstrated to explain the formation procedure of these special nanostructures. Furthermore, the magnetic resonance imaging capability of prepared magnetite nanoparticles was investigated both in vitro and in vivo.