Synthesis and properties of Au-Fe3O4 heterostructured nanoparticles

Au-Fe3O4 composite nanoparticles have received much research interest due to their promising biomedical applications. In this work, Au-Fe3O4 composites with well-defined dimer-like nanostructure were synthesized via thermal decomposition route. The surfactant 1,2-hexandicandiol has proved to be critical for the formation of the Au-Fe3O4 hetero-dimers. The hetero-dimers production yield could be significantly improved to be 90% when the 1,2-hexandicandiol concentration was optimized at 0.6 M. The obtained Au-Fe3O4 hetero-dimers possess dual-functionalities of plasmon resonance and magnetization. Moreover, the Fe3O4 domain of the hetero-dimers can be tuned readily by adjusting the molar ratio between Fe and Au sources. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that these Au-Fe3O4 hetero-dimers could be further developed into star-like Au-Fe3O4 nanoparticles which showed plasmon absorption at NIR region. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.