Submitted by B. Pinho on Wed, 28/10/2020 - 09:56
PhD student Julien Mahin was mentioned in the CEB focus newsletter (CEB Focus 31, October 2020)
"PhD student Julien Mahin uses of a continuous synthesis process capable of producing uniform magnetic iron nanoparticles. The application of these particles are numerous, from MRI contrast agents to cancer treatments.
Current molecules used as contrast agents in MRI scans to make the images clearer, are based on gadolinium, which has potential toxicity issues, particularly for patients with kidney disease. Iron nanoparticles offer a non-toxic alternative, but current production methods cannot effectively control the size distribution of particles. “It’s challenging because what you’re trying to do is control material formation on a very, very small scale – a few nanometres,” says Mahin. “What’s important for biomedical applications is that you know exactly what you’re putting in your body. When pharmaceutical companies develop drugs, they want to know exactly what’s in them and it takes a long time to make sure they’re safe. With nanoparticles, size is one of the most important properties because it will determine other properties of the particle so we need to have particles of a very well defined size.”
Mahin has designed a custom reactor into which the starting components can be continuously pumped and the iron nanoparticles produced. While these methods have previously been applied to iron oxide nanoparticles, this is the first synthesis of metallic iron nanoparticles, which are of considerable interest due to their higher magnetisation.
“By using continuous processes, then because you’re always injecting the reactants at the beginning, and they mix in a very controlled way, you should always get the same product at the exit of the reactor,” explains Mahin. “So that solves the reproducibility issues, which is one of the big challenges of this field. We only get one size of nanoparticle that’s very well defined in this method.”
" Source: Download CEB Focus 31, October 2020
To read more, check the article:
1 Mahin, J. and Torrente-Murciano, L., 2020. Continuous synthesis of monodisperse iron@ iron oxide core@shell nanoparticles. Chemical Engineering Journal, 396, p.125299.
