Aerosol fabrication of thermosensitive nanogels and in situ hybridization with iron nanoparticles

Collison atomized n-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM) droplets were thermally treated with different furnace wall temperatures to form nanogels in an aerosol state. The size of the aerosol nanogels decreased from 40.3 nm to 32.8 nm by increasing the temperature from 40 degrees C to 90 degrees C due to the coil-to-globule transition of the NIPAM. A serial reactor consisting of a spark generator coupled to a collison atomizer was further employed to efficiently (>90% in production yield) fabricate biocompatible (78.8% in cell viability)-magnetic (30.3 emu g(-1) in saturation magnetization) hybrid nanogels of NIPAM and iron nanoparticles. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4736574]