Enhanced MRI relaxivity of aquated Gd³⁺ ions by carboxyphenylated water-dispersed graphene nanoribbons

Abstract

The present study demonstrates that highly water-dispersed graphene nanoribbons dispersed by carboxyphenylated substituents and conjugated to aquated Gd(3+) ions can serve as a high-performance contrast agent (CA) for applications in T1- and T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with relaxivity (r1,2) values outperforming currently-available clinical CAs by up to 16 times for r1 and 21 times for r2.