Zero valent iron core–iron oxide shell nanoparticles as small magnetic particle imaging tracers
Lucy Gloag, Milad Mehdipour, Marina Ulanova, Kevin Mariandry, Muhammad Azrhy Nichol, Daniela J. Hernández-Castillo, Jeffrey M. Gaudet, Ruirui Qiao, Ji Zhang, Melanie Nelson, Benjamin Thierry, M. Álvarez, Thiam Teck Tan, J. Justin Gooding, Nadi Braidy, Perminder S. Sachdev, Richard D. Tilley
Abstract
Nanoparticle tracers with small sizes and large magnetization are critical for biomedical imaging and especially for magnetic particle imaging (MPI). Small size is important for accessing future intracellular and neurological in vivo applications Here, we show <15 nm nanoparticles made of zero valent iron cores, iron oxide shells and coated with a strongly binding brush co-polymer are effective MPI tracers. The small nanoparticle cores create a hydrodynamic diameter that is half of the state-of-the-art iron oxide tracers while the strongly magnetic zero valent iron maintains similar MPI signal magnitude and resolution.