Magnetic and Other Metallic Nanoparticles
for Possible Medical Applications

Robert Sinclair, He Li, Ai Leen Koh
Department of Materials Science and Engineering,
Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA

              
There is increasing interest in the application of nanoparticles in medical research, particularly for early cancer detection and therapy.  Our work concentrates on their structural characterization.  Magnetic nanoparticles can be used for MRI diagnoses, noble metal nanoparticles significantly enhance Raman spectroscopy signals.  We have synthesized magnetic nanoparticles by chemical means and stabilized them with a graphite coating.  The phases present are not always those predicted from the bulk phase diagram.  We have also successfully imaged silver nanoparticles attached onto leukemia cells by a variety of electron microscopy techniques.  The successful conjugation of nanoparticles onto cells is also analyzed by surface enhanced Raman spectra. 

This work is supported by the Stanford Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence Focused on Therapy Response (CCNE-TR) grant (NIH U54).  Use of the facilities at the Stanford Nanocharacterization Laboratory and the National Center for Electron Microscopy, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract # DE-AC02-05CH11231, is recognized.