Synthesis and characterization of water-soluble magnetite nanocrystals via one-step sol-gel pathway

Water-soluble magnetite nanocrystals have been prepared by one-step non-alkoxide sol-gel method.The magnetic properties of magnetite nanocrystals obtained are size dependent.The experimental results also reveal that 2-pyrrolidone not only serves as solvent,but also involves surface coordination which renders the magnetite nanoparticles water-soluble and colloidal solution stable.Although the current synthetic approach is a small modification to the non-alkoxide sol-gel method,it allows us to directly obtain high-quality water-soluble magnetic nanocrystals.In addition,we realize that this method could be easily extended to preparation of many other transition and main group metal oxide water-soluble nanocrystals only from simple metal ion salts.