Manufacturing Man-Made Magnetosomes: High-Throughput In Situ Synthesis of Biomimetic Magnetite Loaded Nanovesicles

A new synthetic method for the production of artificial magnetosomes, i.e., lipid-coated vesicles containing magnetic nanoparticles, is demonstrated. Magnetosomes have considerable potential in biomedical and other nanotechnological applications but current production methods rely upon magnetotactic bacteria which limits the range of sizes and shapes that can be generated as well as the obtainable yield. Here, electrohydrodynamic atomization is utilized to form nanoscale liposomes of tunable size followed by electroporation to transport iron into the nanoliposome core resulting in magnetite crystallization. Using a combination of electron and fluorescence microscopy, dynamic light scattering, Raman spectroscopy, and magnetic susceptibility measurements, it is shown that single crystals of single-phase magnetite can be precipitated within each liposome, forming a near-monodisperse population of magnetic nanoparticles. For the specific conditions used in this study the mean particle size is 58 nm (+/- 8 nm) but the system offers a high degree of flexibility in terms of both the size and composition of the final product.