Synthesis of magnetic Fe3O4@Al3+ particles and its application in DNA extraction

Abstract

The rapid nucleic acid extraction is essential, particularly the communicable diseases pandemic. In this work, aluminum modified Fe3O4 (Fe3O4@Al3+) particles were successfully synthesized by solvthermal method, epoxidation, covalent binding of iminodiacetic acid and Al3+ ions coordination for DNA extraction. Fe3O4@Al3+ particles could greatly improve the efficiency of DNA extraction and the extraction could be totally completed within 15 minutes at the optimum condition. The simple and rapid method is mainly based on the Fe3O4@Al3+ particles, which have large specific surface area, superparamagnetism, and Al3+ ions affinity to DNA. Additionally, several characterizations were carried out to further investigate the features of Fe3O4@Al3+ particles. According to SEM image, the average dimension of monodispersed Fe3O4@Al3+ spheres was around 200 nm. XPS results showed the existence of Al3+ on the surface of Fe3O4 particles, which further demonstrated the success of metal chelation in this material synthesis. The XRD patterns indicated that the Fe3O4@Al3+ particles were the inverse spinel structure as the bare Fe3O4 particles. Good magnetism of Fe3O4@Al3+ particles determined by VSM indicated that this material could be easily separated from the reaction system. To summarize, Fe3O4@Al3+ particles is expected to play an important role in future DNA extraction due to remarkable performance. Highlights The DNA separation media Fe3O4@Al3+ particles were successfully synthesized. DNA adsorption was effectively achieved by Fe3O4@Al3+ particles based on metal chelation. DNA extraction was significantly boosted by Fe3O4@Al3+ particles.