Fabrication of Fe3O4-silica core-shell magnetic nano-particles and its characterization for biomedical applications

In the past few years, magnetic nano-particles (magnetite) have captured more attention in the field of biomaterial world. Various methods have been adopted for its synthesis, of which a simple, low temperature co-precipitation method was selected and adopted. Synthesized iron oxide magnetic nano-particles encounter limitations such as insolubility, aggregation, high reactivity and biodegradation in biological medium. To enhance the magnetic properties with various limitations, functionalization or encapsulation within the shell by way of surface coating has been recently appreciated by medical scientists. Functionalization or coating by silica has more and easily carried out by sol-gel technique. The encapsulated, core magnetite nano-particles are characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDAX), Hydrodynamic size and compressive strength. The tweaking results from the above various characterization techniques revealed the formation of well-resolved peak intensity with appealing microstructures and particle size distribution with better compressive strength values. On the basis of these observations, we envision that the iron oxide/silica core-shell magnetic nano-particles is an intersting biomaterial for orthopedical applications. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.