Synthesis and characterization of monodisperse magnetic Fe3O4@BSA core–shell nanoparticles

In this paper, magnetic Fe3O4 bovine serum albumin (Fe3O4@BSA) core–shell nanoparticles with narrow particle size distribution were synthesized. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) demonstrated that Fe3O4@BSA core–shell nanoparticles with the spherical morphology were well monodispersed with the diameter of about 35 nm. Fourier transform infrared spectra (FTIR) provided the sufficient evidence for the presence of BSA in the Fe3O4@BSA core–shell nanoparticles. X-ray diffraction (XRD) indicated that the crystalline structure of Fe3O4 nanoparticles was unchanged in the composites. The Fe3O4@BSA core–shell nanoparticles possessed a characteristic of super-paramagnetic with the saturation magnetization value of about 56.43 emu/g determined by vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). Besides, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) showed that the content of BSA in Fe3O4@BSA core–shell nanoparticles was up to about 38.2%.