One-Step Preparation of Highly Stable Copper-Zinc Ferrite Nanoparticles in Water Suitable for MRI Thermometry

Dorota Lachowicz; John Stroud; Janusz H Hankiewicz; River Gassen; Angelika Kmita; Joanna Stepień; Zbigniew Celinski; Marcin Sikora; Jan Zukrowski; Marta Gajewska; Marek Przybylski

doi:10.1021/acs.chemmater.2c00079

One-Step Preparation of Highly Stable Copper-Zinc Ferrite Nanoparticles in Water Suitable for MRI Thermometry

Chem Mater. 2022 May 10;34(9):4001-4018. doi: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.2c00079. Epub 2022 Apr 20.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Academic Centre for Materials and Nanotechnology, AGH University of Science and Technology, 30-059 Krakow, Poland.
² Center for the Biofrontiers Institute, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, 1420 Austin Bluffs Pkway, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80918, United States.
³ Faculty of Physics and Applied Computer Science, AGH University of Science and Technology, 30-059 Krakow, Poland.

Abstract

Superparamagnetic ferrite nanoparticles coated with a polymer layer are widely used for biomedical applications. The objective of this work is to design nanoparticles as a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) temperature-sensitive contrast agent. Copper-zinc ferrite nanoparticles coated with a poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) layer are synthesized using a one-step thermal decomposition method in a polymer matrix. The resulting nanoparticles are stable in water and biocompatible. Using Mössbauer spectroscopy and magnetometry, it was determined that the grown nanoparticles exhibit superparamagnetic properties. Embedding these particles into an agarose gel resulted in significant modification of water proton relaxation times T ₁, T ₂, and T ₂* determined by nuclear magnetic resonance measurements. The results of the spin-echo T ₂-weighted MR images of an aqueous phantom with embedded Cu_0.08Zn_0.54Fe_2.38O₄ nanoparticles in the presence of a strong temperature gradient show a strong correlation between the temperature and the image intensity. The presented results support the hypothesis that CuZn ferrite nanoparticles can be used as a contrast agent for MRI thermometry.