Multifunctional composite nanoparticles: Magnetic, luminescent, and mesoporous

The synthesis of uniform magnetic/luminescent functional mesoporous silica nanoparticles with well ordered porous structure and good aqueous dispersity was investigated. Te magnetic nanoparticles are coated with a silica shell by hydrolysis of TEOS in oil-in-water reverse microemulsion to obtain water suspended magnetic core shell nanoparticles. Dring the synthetic process the organic dyes can be simultaneously incorporated into the mesoporous silica framework by the co-condensation method. The surfactants were removed by a fast and efficient ion exchange method and examined by FTIR. The nanoparticle solution used for relaxivity measurements and cellular uptake experiments was prepared by transferring the extracted Mag-Dye@MSN from ethanol to D.I. water. TEM and FE-SEM images revealed that the multifunctional nanoparticles not only posses a unique tumblerlike morphology but are also very uniform in size.