Participating Countries:

	COST is supported by the EU Framework Programme Horizon 2020
	This website is supported by COST

Andreas Sergides

SYNTHESIS OF METAL NANOPARTICLES FOR MAGNETIC HYPERTHEMIA

FeCo alloys are soft magnetic materials exhibiting low magnetic anisotropy constant (K Fe50Co50 = 1.5 x 104 J/m3) and the highest saturation magnetisation (Ms) among any other metal or alloy (bulk Ms: 240 – 245 emu/g). In addition, Co is the only element that increases the Ms when alloyed with Fe (55-65% Fe)1. These remarkable properties of FeCo nanoparticles (NPs), in superparamagnetic regime, in conjunction with their high heating rate2 ensure high potential for biomedical applications, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI), Magnetic Drug Targeting (MDT) and especially Magnetic Fluid Hyperthermia (MFH) for cancer treatment. However, the synthesis of these NPs remains a challenging task due to their poor chemical stability.

Herein we report the synthesis of FeCo NPs by thermal decomposition of organometallic precursors. The synthesis is based on the co-decomposition of Fe(CO)5 and Co(n3-C8H13)(n4-C8H12) in the presence of various ligands (oleic acid – OA, palmitic acid – PA, hexadecylamine – HDA, hexadecylamine hydrochloride – HDA.HCl) under 3 bars of H2 at 150 oC. During this study, we aimed to elucidate the effect of ligands, ligands’ concentration and ratio on the size, morphology and magnetic properties of the as-prepared NPs. In the most cases, spherical core-shell NPs were obtained with an average diameter less than 25 nm (Fig. 1). Among other techniques, WAXS, SQUID and TEM have been used for the determination of the structural, compositional and magnetic characteristics of these NPs.

References

1. Clifford, D. M.; Castano, C. E.; Lu, A. J.; Carpenter, E. E., Synthesis of FeCo alloy magnetically aligned linear chains by the polyol process: structural and magnetic characterization. J. Mater. Chem. C 2015, 3 (42), 11029-11035.

2. Kappiyoor, R.; Liangruksa, M.; Ganguly, R.; Puri, I. K., The effects of magnetic nanoparticle properties on magnetic fluid hyperthermia. Journal of Applied Physics 2010, 108 (9), 094702.