Dextran grafted nickel-doped superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles: Electrochemical synthesis and characterization

In this paper, polymer grafted nickel-doped iron oxide nanoparticles are fabricated via an easy, one-step and fast electrochemical procedure. In the deposition experiments, iron(II) chloride hexahydrate, iron(III) nitrate nonahydrate, nickel chloride hexahydrate, and dextran were used as the bath composition. Dextran grafted nickel-doped iron oxides (DEX/Ni-SPIOs) were synthesized with applying direct current (dc) of 10 mA cm–2. The magnetite crystal phase, nano-size, Ni doped content, and dextran grafting onto SPIOs were verified through X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and thermogravimetric (TG) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analyses. Magnetic evaluation through vibrating-sample magnetometer (VSM) proved that the DEX/Ni-SPIOs product have superparamagnetic behavior with exhibiting the high saturation magnetization and negligible Ms and Hci values. Based on the obtained results, it was confirmed that the prepared dextran grafted Ni-SPIOs have suitable physico-chemical and magnetic properties for both therapeutic and diagnostic aims.