Synthesis of Distinct Iron Oxide Nanomaterial Shapes Using Lyotropic Liquid Crystal Solvents.

Donald W Miller,Matthew Worden,Seyyed Muhammad Salili,Ahlam Nemati,Torsten Hegmann

doi:10.3390/nano7080211

Donald W Miller, Matthew Worden + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/nano7080211

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Abstract

A room temperature reduction-hydrolysis of Fe(III) precursors such as FeCl3 or Fe(acac)3 in various lyotropic liquid crystal phases (lamellar, hexagonal columnar, or micellar) formed by a range of ionic or neutral surfactants in H2O is shown to be an effective and mild approach for the preparation of iron oxide (IO) nanomaterials with several morphologies (shapes and dimensions), such as extended thin nanosheets with lateral dimensions of several hundred nanometers as well as smaller nanoflakes and nanodiscs in the tens of nanometers size regime. We will discuss the role of the used surfactants and lyotropic liquid crystal phases as well as the shape and size differences depending upon when and how the resulting nanomaterials were isolated from the reaction mixture. The presented synthetic methodology using lyotropic liquid crystal solvents should be widely applicable to several other transition metal oxides for which the described reduction-hydrolysis reaction sequence is a suitable pathway to obtain nanoscale particles.

Highlights

The effects of surface chemistry and other properties of functionalized iron oxide nanoparticles (IO NPs) on cell uptake are fairly well established
We have shown that surfactant-water systems, both as bulk lyotropic LC or micellar solutions, are noteworthy solvents for the shape- and size-controlled synthesis of IO nanostructures
Using the reduction-hydrolysis reaction of a single iron(III) precursor discovered in our laboratory we were able to synthesize a range of magnetic IO nanostructures with disc, sheet, crumpled sheet, as well as polyhedral shapes

Summary

Introduction

The effects of surface chemistry and other properties of functionalized iron oxide nanoparticles (IO NPs) on cell uptake are fairly well established This is best seen in the large number of reviews published on this topic over the past decade [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27]. While there is a wealth of data for T2 MRI contrast enhancement and magnetic hyperthermia use of such IO nanoshapes [41], specific cell uptake [42] in various relevant tissue or cancer cell lines as well as their intracellular behavior have remained, to a large extent, unexplored

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Discussion

Conclusion