Saccharide-coated superparamagnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles (SPIONs) for biomedical applications: An efficient and scalable route for preparation and in situ surface coating through cathodic electrochemical deposition (CED)

•Naked Fe3O4 nanoparticles were successfully prepared in aqueous chloride medium.•Facile one-step approach to fabricate saccharide coated Fe3O4NPs was constructed.•Saccharide coated NPs have proper structural and magnetic characters.

In this letter, we report a facile one-step electrochemical approach to fabricate naked and polysaccharide coated Fe3O4 nanoparticles. Based on the cathodic electrochemical deposition (CED) process, pure and well-defined Fe3O4 nanoparticles are first prepared under the mild conditions. Then, two typical saccharides (i.e. starch and glucose) are coated on the nanoparticles during CED process. The prepared naked and saccharide coated NPs are characterized through XRD, IR, FE-SEM, TEM, DSC-TGA, DLS and VSM techniques. The saccharide layer on the Fe3O4surface was confirmed by FT-IR, DLS and DSC-TG analyses. The VSM data qualified magnetic behavior of the prepared NPs for use in biomedical applications.