Iron based magnetic nanoparticles: from synthesis to advanced applications

Nanoparticles have come and continue to be an extremely interesting research topic due to the variety of applications, deriving from the possibility to opportunely tailor their properties through different preparation methods. Among nanoparticles, magnetic nanostructures, due to their special characteristics, represent an interesting tool for advanced applications. Focusing our research on the synthesis and characterization of magnetic nanoparticles, we developed materials for potential advanced applications. In the framework of my PhD research, I devoted myself on two main potential applications: in the biomedical field for magnetic drug delivery and in the environmental field for heavy metals capture and organic pollutant degradation. The research has been always performed on magnetic nanosized structures, dealing with iron-based particles since they allow to obtain, in an easy and reliable way, a product with specific and welldefined properties. The PhD research activity was mainly focused on the synthesis and characterization of magnetic nanoparticles, opportunely functionalized and engineered to be applied in biomedical and environmental fields. The difference of the two applications required opportunely tailored materials, and thus proper synthetic methods have been adopted. The work will be divided into two main parts separated for the specific application where synthetic protocols, characterizations and results are reported and extensively discussed. In both applications, ferrite nanoparticles were opportunely synthesized and functionalized. Within the biomedical field, the main effort was done to synthetize the optimal nanoparticles based material to be conjugated with a fluorescent tripeptide and to evaluate the drug release activated through an enzyme recognition and cleavage process. Instead within environmental field, opportune functionalized nanoparticles were employed in toxic metals capture and recovery from waters, performing static and dynamic procedures. Experiments among photocatalysis were also performed; magnetite or ferrite nanoparticles were used as nucleation seeds in the synthesis of TiO2 nanoparticles achieving excellent efficiency in degradation of Methylene Blue.