SBIR Phase I: Commercial Scale Production of High Quality and Affordable Fe3O4 Nanocrystals for Nano-Biomedicine

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I research project intends to develop commercial scale production protocols for high quality, highly stable, biocompatible, bio-accessible, and yet affordable magnetic Fe3O4 nanocrystals. Current state-of-the-art methodology used to make Fe3O4 nanocrystals has many deficiencies including poor size control, broad size distribution of nanocrystals and difficult/ complicated surface modification. These challenging issues have substantially hindered the full exploitation of this class of very promising nanomaterials for biomedical applications, such as magnetic separation, cell and other types of biolabeling, drug delivery, curing medicine, magnetic resonance imagine (MRI) enhancing reagents, etc. Success of this research effort will greatly accelerate the commercialization efforts in the field by providing a reliable, high quality, bio-ready, and yet affordable materials base material. The biomedical applications related to magnetic nanocrystals encompasses many different aspects of the medical field, ranging from diagnostics, detection, therapy, separation, and pollution control.