Synthesis and characterization of the Fe3O4@SiO2-[Eu(DBM)3phen]Cl3- luminomagnetic microspheres

Abstract In this paper, we report fabrication and characterization of the luminomagnetic microspheres (denoted as Fe 3 O 4 @SiO 2 –[Eu(DBM) 3 phen]Cl 3 ). The fluorescent magnetic microspheres were synthesized via preparing Eu(DBM) 3 phen]Cl 3 @SiO 2 –NH 2 nanoparticles first by combination of the solvent precipitation method and the Stober method, followed by grafting the fluorescent nanoparticles onto Fe 3 O 4 . The morphological, textural, magnetic and photoluminescence properties were well-characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID), and photoluminescence spectra. The experimental results show that the core–shell structured luminomagnetic microspheres with an average size of ca. 570 nm possessed high magnetization saturation value (61.7 emu/g) with a negligible coercivity and strong red emission peak (614 nm) from 5 D 0 – 7 F 2 transition of Eu 3+ ions, indicating that they have potential applications for optical imaging and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy.