American Chemical Society, Nano Letters, 3(2), p. 183-186, 2002
DOI: 10.1021/nl015681q
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This paper describes a solâgel approach for the coating of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles with uniform shells of amorphous silica. The coating process has been successfully applied to particles contained in a commercial ferrofluid (e.g., the EMG 304 of Ferrofluidics) and those synthesized through a wet chemical process. The thickness of silica coating could be conveniently controlled in the range of 2â100 nm by changing the concentration of the solâgel solution. Fluorescent dyes, for example, 7-(dimethylamino)-4-methylcoumarin-3-isothiocyanate (DACITC) and tetramethylrhodamine-5-isothiocyanate (5-TRITC), have also been incorporated into the silica shells by covalently coupling these organic compounds with the solâgel precursor. These multifunctional nanoparticles are potentially useful in a number of areas because they can be simultaneously manipulated with an externally applied magnetic field and characterized in situ using conventional fluorescence microscopy.