Composite Chitosan/Agarose Ferrogels for Potential Applications in Magnetic Hyperthermia

Gels

Vanessa Zamora-Mora²  Paula I.P. Soares¹  Coro Echeverria¹  Rebeca Hernández²  Carmen Mijangos² 

[1] CENIMAT/I3N, Departamento de Ciência dos Materiais, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, FCT, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal; E-Mails:;Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología de Polímeros (ICTP-CSIC) c/ Juan de la Cierva 3, 28006 Madrid, Spain; E-Mail:

关键词: chitosan;    agarose;    magnetic nanoparticles;    magnetic hyperthermia;   

DOI  :  10.3390/gels1010069

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Composite ferrogels were obtained by encapsulation of magnetic nanoparticles at two different concentrations (2.0 and 5.0 % w/v) within mixed agarose/chitosan hydrogels having different concentrations of agarose (1.0, 1.5 and 2.0% (w/v)) and a fixed concentration of chitosan (0.5% (w/v)). The morphological characterization carried out by scanning electron microscopy showed that dried composite ferrogels present pore sizes in the micrometer range. Thermogravimetric measurements showed that ferrogels present higher degradation temperatures than blank chitosan/agarose hydrogels without magnetic nanoparticles. In addition, measurements of the elastic moduli of the composite ferrogels evidenced that the presence of magnetic nanoparticles in the starting aqueous solutions prevents to some extent the agarose gelation achieved by simply cooling chitosan/agarose aqueous solutions. Finally, it is shown that composite chitosan/agarose ferrogels are able to heat in response to the application of an alternating magnetic field so that they can be considered as potential biomaterials to be employed in magnetic hyperthermia treatments.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.