One-step hydrothermal synthesis of highly water-soluble secondary structural Fe3O4 nanoparticles

Abstract Magnetite nanoparticles (MNPs) were prepared using the ferric acetylacetonate as the sole iron source in a facile hydrothermal route, while poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) was chosen as the stabilizer via one-step functionalized MNPs for better hydrophilic properties. The orthogonal was used in the paper for the experimental parameters optimization, including the solvent, the reaction time, the amount of stabilizer and the presynthesis. The obtained highly water dispersible MNPs with uniform size from about 50 to about 100 nm was individually composed of many monodisperse magnetite crystallites approximately 6 nm in size. And the MNPs show high magnetic properties, whose magnetite content was up to 76.76% and the saturation magnetization was 39.0 emu/g. Later the formation mechanism of MNPs was also discussed. Thus the MNPs proved to be very promising for biomedical applications.