Abstract
Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) have been extensively used as bioimaging contrast agents, heating sources for tumor therapy, and carriers for controlled drug delivery and release to target organs and tissues. These applications require elaborate tuning of the physical and magnetic properties of the SPIONs. The authors present here a search-coil-based method to characterize these properties. The nonlinear magnetic response of SPIONs to alternating current magnetic fields induces harmonic signals that contain information of these nanoparticles. By analyzing the phase lag and harmonic ratios in the SPIONs, the authors can predict the saturation magnetization, the average hydrodynamic size, the dominating relaxation processes of SPIONs, and the distinction between single- and multicore particles. The numerical simulations reveal that the harmonic ratios are inversely proportional to saturation magnetizations and core diameters of SPIONs, and that the phase lag is dependent on the hydrodynamic volumes of SPIONs, which corroborate the experimental results. Herein, the authors stress the feasibility of using search coils as a method to characterize physical and magnetic properties of SPIONs, which may be applied as building blocks in nanoparticle characterization devices.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 1604135 |
Journal | Small |
Volume | 13 |
Issue number | 22 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 13 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors thank the support from the Institute of Engineering in Medicine, National Science Foundation MRSEC facility program, the Distinguished McKnight University Professorship, UROP program, MNDrive STEM program, MNDrive program, and the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship from the University of Minnesota. Parts of this work were carried out in the Characterization Facility, University of Minnesota, a member of the NSF-funded Materials Research Facilities Network (www.mrfn.org) via the MRSEC program.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Keywords
- harmonic ratio
- phase lag
- saturation magnetization
- superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles