Magnetite Nanoparticles Study Applied to Magnetic Hyperthermia Treatment

The functionalization of superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) nanoparticles with bioactive molecules enables new applications of these nanomaterials due to their magnetic properties, which is affected by the surface coating of the nanoparticles. In this work, Fe3O4 nanoparticles type / core layer were synthesized by co-precipitation wet method and coated with a polymer mixture of polyethylene glycol (PEG). It was performed a study about duration in encapsulation of nanoparticles in their final size in order to get different thickness of coated layer and varied coating properties. With this study was expected to obtain different thicknesses and thus the coating properties. Five samples were synthesized according to the same procedure and amount of reactants used synthetic sequence for all samples, only varying the time spent by each sample coating process with polyethylene glycol. The different times for the coating samples were 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 50 minutes and finally 60 minutes. The nanoparticles were characterized by Nanosight, TGA and DSC techniques. The results showed that the particle size suffers an increase during the first 30 minutes of duration of the coating step and then stabilizes.