Magneto-Optical Properties of a Ferrofluid with Chitosan Coating

Abstract

The use of magnetic materials, such as ferrofluids, is of great importance in biomedical applications, and as a result, interest in studying their magneto-optical properties has grown significantly in recent years. Therefore, in this work, magnetic nanoparticles were synthesized with chitosan coating, leaving the product as a ferrofluid in aqueous solution. Structural, morphological, magnetic, and optical characterization was carried out obtaining a cubic structure centered on the faces, a spherical morphology with a size distribution of 10–14 nm according to TEM images and a magnetic saturation of 53 emu/g. In the optical properties, the effect of chitosan shell on the forbidden band was studied, showing a blue-shifting effect, due to reduction on the inner magnetic nanoparticles size.