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Alternating current (AC) susceptibility as a particle-focused probe of coating and clustering behaviour in magnetic nanoparticle suspensions.

Narayanasamy, Kaarjel K.; Cruz-Acuña, Melissa; Rinaldi, Carlos; Everett, James; Dobson, Jon; Telling, Neil

Alternating current (AC) susceptibility as a particle-focused probe of coating and clustering behaviour in magnetic nanoparticle suspensions. Thumbnail


Authors

Kaarjel K. Narayanasamy

Melissa Cruz-Acuña

Carlos Rinaldi

Jon Dobson



Abstract

HYPOTHESIS: The functionality of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) relies heavily on their surface coating, which in turn affects the interactions between MNPs, and the formation of single-core particles or multi-core clusters. In this study we assessed the use of AC susceptibility (ACS) as a magnetic probe of the kinetics of coating and agglomeration of functionalised nanoparticles. We demonstrate the precision and sensitivity of ACS measurements to small changes in MNP coating using arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD) tripeptide binding, and subsequently discuss how ACS can be used to optimise the preparation of polyethyleneimine (PEI) functionalised MNPs aimed at nanomagnetic transfection applications. EXPERIMENTS: We varied the PEI loading of suspensions of MNPs exhibiting a combination of Brownian and Néel relaxation, and used dialysis to study the movement of excess PEI during the coating process. Numerical ACS simulations were employed to determine particle cluster sizes and polydispersity and the results compared with conventional dynamic light scattering (DLS) size measurements. FINDINGS: ACS provided information on the MNP coating and agglomeration process that was not accessible through DLS due to the additional presence of non-magnetic polymer particulates in the suspensions. We consequently derived a simple method to obtain dense, uniform PEI coatings affording high-stability suspensions without excessive quantities of unbound PEI.

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Aug 6, 2018
Online Publication Date Aug 7, 2018
Publication Date Dec 15, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Journal of Colloid and Interface Science
Print ISSN 0021-9797
Publisher Elsevier
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 532
Pages 536 - 545
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcis.2018.08.014
Keywords AC susceptibility, Brownian relaxation, Dynamic light scattering, Hydrodynamic size, Magnetic nanoparticles, Particle clustering, Polyethyleneimine (PEI), Surface coating
Publisher URL https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcis.2018.08.014

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