Açaí oil as an alternative in the synthesis and coating of iron oxide nanoparticles

Abstract

In the last decades, nanotechnology studies have attracted the attention of researchers from various fields, engineering, chemistry, physics, medicine, environment. Medicine, nanomedicine, the major advances in the diagnosis and therapies of diseases, such as magnetic resonance imaging and the treatment of cancer by hyperthermia, respectively. Nanomaterials for such biomedical applications should have size control of less than 20 nm, crystal structure and well-defined morphology. Thus, as nanoparticles of iron oxide (Fe3O4) is one of the materials most studied for such applications. Thus, iron oxide nanoparticles were synthesized by variation of the thermal decomposition method, which is described as one of the best quality nanoparticle synthesis tools. During the synthesis, we used açaí oil, rich in fatty acids, palmitoleic, linoleic and palmitic, as a process of synthesis and coating of nanoparticles, making them biocompatible. The açaí oil was made by the supercritical extraction method, where the product can be obtained pure, free of solvents. The samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and the magnetite phase (Fe3O4) was identify through the position of the intensity peaks. The nanoparticles present spherical morphology with a diameter of 3 to 10 nm, observed through transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images. In addition, neutron analysis (NAA) determined that the samples had a concentration of 74.93% Fe3O4 and a remaining database is related to the coating of sample nanoparticles as potentiated for biomedical applications.