Microbial-Physical Synthesis of Fe and Fe3O4 Magnetic Nanoparticles Using Aspergillus niger YESM1 and Supercritical Condition of Ethanol

Magnetic Fe and Fe3O4 (magnetite) nanoparticles are successfully synthesized using Aspergillus niger YESM 1 and supercritical condition of liquids. Aspergillus niger is used for decomposition of FeSO4 and FeCl3 to FeS and Fe2O3, respectively. The produced particles are exposed to supercritical condition of ethanol for 1 hour at 300 degrees C and pressure of 850 psi. The phase structure and the morphologymeasurements yield pure iron andmajor Fe3O4 spherical nanoparticles with average size of 18 and 50 nm, respectively. The crystal size amounts to 9 nm for Fe and 8nm for Fe3O4. The magnetic properties are measured to exhibit superparamagnetic-and ferromagnetic-like behaviors for Fe and Fe3O4 nanoparticles, respectively. The saturation magnetization amounts to 112 and 68 emu/g for Fe and Fe3O4, respectively. The obtained results open new route for using the biophysical method for large-scale production of highly magnetic nanoparticles to be used for biomedical applications.