International Research Fellowship Program: Synthesis of Novel Magnetic Nanoparticles Engineered with Polymeric Micellar Templates

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0207035HarrisThe International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will support an eighteen month research fellowship by Dr. Linda A. Harris to work with Dr. Tim G. St. Pierre at the University of Western Australia in Perth, Australia. Support for this project is from the Math and Physical Sciences Directorate's Office of Multidisciplinary Activities.The goal of this project is to prepare well-defined isolated magnetic nanoparticles encapsulated in an organic sheath, and to use these as models for understanding nanomagnetic behavior. The availability of magnetic nanoparticles with well-defined structural features is a major hurdle in understanding structure-magnetic behavior relationships. The Pis will synthesize a series of polymers that will serve as nanoreactors for the controlled formation of iron oxide nanoparticles. These well-defined materials will function as models to test the hypothesis that constrained polymer micelles can control the size and morphology of iron oxide nanoparticles. These methods will be used to synthesize iron oxide nanoparticles selectively labeled with 57 Fe at either the particle surface or core. Differentiating the surface vs. core will allow particle sub-structure characterization by Mossbauer spectroscopy to enable correlations between nanomagnetic behavior and structure.Professor St. Pierre has over a decade of experience in the study of synthetic and biogenic magnetic materials with a particular focus on iron oxides.