Facile synthesis of 55Fe-labeled well-dispersible hematite nanoparticles for bioaccumulation studies in nanotoxicology

Huang, Bin; Xiao, Lin; Yang, Liu-Yan; Ji, Rong; Miao, Ai-Jun

Facile synthesis of 55Fe-labeled well-dispersible hematite nanoparticles for bioaccumulation studies in nanotoxicology

2016

Huang, Bin | Xiao, Lin | Yang, Liu-Yan | Ji, Rong | Miao, Ai-Jun

Although water-dispersible engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) have a wide range of applications, the ENPs used in many nanotoxicological studies tend to form micron-sized aggregates in the exposure media and thus cannot reflect the toxicity of real nanoparticles. Here we described the synthesis of bare hematite nanoparticles (HNPs-0) and two poly(acrylic acid) (PAA)-coated forms (HNPs-1 and HNPs-2). All three HNPs were well dispersed in deionized water, but HNPs-0 quickly aggregated in the three culture media tested. By contrast, the suspensions of HNPs-1 and HNPs-2 remained stable, with negligible amounts of PAA and Fe3+ liberated from either one under the investigated conditions. To better quantify the accumulation of the coated HNPs, a relatively innocuous 55Fe-labeled form of HNPs-2 was synthesized as an example and its accumulation in three phytoplankton species was tested. Consistent with the uptake kinetics model for conventional pollutants, the cellular accumulation of HNPs-2 increased linearly with exposure time for two of the three phytoplankton species. These results demonstrate the utility of 55Fe-labeled well-dispersible HNPs as a model material for nanoparticle bioaccumulation studies in nanotoxicology.

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