ZnFe2O4 nanoparticles for potential application in radiosensitization

Radiosensitizer is a material that can increase the effects of radiation in radiotherapy application. Various materials with high effective atomic number have been developed as a radiosensitizer, such as metal, iron oxide and quantum dot. In this study, ZnFe2O4 nanoparticles are included in iron oxide class were synthesized by precipitation method from the solution of zinc nitrate and ferrite nitrate and followed by calcination at 700 degrees C for 3 hours. The XRD pattern shows that most of the observed peaks can be indexed to the cubic phase of ZnFe2O4 with a lattice parameter of 8.424 angstrom SEM image reveals that nanoparticles are the sphere-like shape with size in the range 84-107 nm. The ability of ZnFe2O4 nanoparticles as radiosensitizer was examined by loading those nanoparticles into Escherichia coli cell culture which irradiated with photon energy of 6 MV at a dose of 2 Gy. ZnFe2O4 nanoparticles showed ability to increase the absorbed dose by 0.5 to 1.0 cGy/g. In addition, the presence of 1 g/L ZnFe2O4 nanoparticles resulted in an increase radiation effect by 6.3% higher than if exposed to radiation only. These results indicated that ZnFe2O4 nanoparticles can be used as the radiosensitizer for increasing radiation effect in radiotherapy.