posted on 2025-02-04, 22:14authored byH. T.
Kim Duong, Agus R. Poerwoprajitno, Andre Bongers, Saeed Shanehsazzadeh, Ashkan Abdibastami, Scott Sulway, Anne Rich, J. Justin Gooding, Richard D. Tilley
Fe3O4 core Gd shell nanoparticles
are interesting
candidates as multimodal MRI/MPI contrast agents/tracers that can
potentially provide MPI signal from the magnetic iron component while
still achieving positive MRI contrast from the Gd shell. However,
a current challenge in synthesizing these NPs is controlling the uniformity
of the Gd shell while maintaining the particle size. In this study,
we show that by using thermal decomposition of mixed metal oleate
precursors, the iron oxide nanoparticle core with Gd shell coating
can be varied from 7% to 27% while maintaining a high level of control
over the particle size, producing highly uniform particles of d =
13.5 nm. Iron oxide nanoparticles with moderate Gd coating have resulted
in improved MPI signal and MRI relaxation compared with commercial
tracers, indicating that iron oxide core Gd shell nanoparticles are
effective materials for both MPI and MRI applications. These results
demonstrate the ability to synthetically control both the amount of
the Gd shell and the size of the core–shell iron oxide nanoparticles,
which can be applied to other magnetic nanomaterials.