Preparation and characterization of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles stabilized by alginate

SPION with appropriate surface chemistry have been widely used experimentally for numerous in vivo applications. In this study, SPION stabilized by alginate (SPION-alginate) were prepared by a modified coprecipitation method. The structure, size, morphology, magnetic property and relaxivity of the SPION-alginate were characterized systematically by means of XRD, TEM, ESEM, AFM, DLS, SQUID magnetometer and MRI, respectively, and the interaction between alginate and iron oxide (Fe3O4) was characterized by FT-IR and AFM. The results revealed that typical iron oxide nanoparticles were Fe3O4 with a core diameter of 5–10 nm and SPION-alginate had a hydrodynamic diameter of 193.8–483.2 nm. From the magnetization curve, the Ms of a suspension of SPION-alginate was 40 emu/g, corresponding to 73% of that of solid SPION-alginate. This high Ms may be due to the binding of Fe3O4 nanoparticles to alginate macromolecule strands as visually confirmed by AFM. SPION-alginate of several hundred nanometers was stable in size for 12 months at 4 °C. Moreover, T1 relaxivity and T2 relaxivity of SPION-alginate in saline (1.5 T, 20 °C) were 7.86 ± 0.20 s−1 mM−1 and 281.2 ± 26.4 s−1 mM−1, respectively.