Preparation of Graphene Oxide/Fe ₃ O ₄ Nanocomposite as a Potential Magnetic Nanocarrier and MRI Contrast Agent

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, graphene oxide/ magnetite (GO/Fe 3 O 4 ) nanocomposite was synthesized as a carrier and MRI contrast agent. X‐ray diffraction (XRD) indicated that the crystalline structure of Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles and Furrier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT‐IR) provided evidence for the presence of Fe 3 O 4 and GO in the nanocomposite. The surface morphology of the nanocomposite was studied by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The magnetic properties of the synthesized nanocomposite was studied by a vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). The drug loading and encapsulation efficiency of the curcumin were 22 and 96 %, respectively. The comparison between drug release from GO/Fe 3 O 4 in neutral and acidic pH was shown high release in neutral conditions. MTT results demonstrated that the GO/Fe 3 O 4 nanocomposite illustrates considerable toxicity due to which cell viability decreased to lower than 50 % at 140 μg ml −1 concentration. The results showed that curcumin and curcumin loaded nanocomposite has a similar power of antioxidant activities. GO/Fe 3 O 4 nanocomposite is a good magnetic resonance T 2 contrast agent under the T 2 ‐imaging sequences. The novelty of this study is the application of water‐dispersed GO/Fe 3 O 4 with pH‐dependent release properties for designing a new colon drug delivery.