Document Type

Article

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

Polymer science, Materials engineering, Nano-materials, Nano-processes

Publication Details

Scientific Reports

Abstract

Advances in nanofabrication methods have enabled the tailoring of new strategies towards the controlled production of nanoparticles with attractive applications in healthcare. In many cases, their characterisation remains a big challenge, particularly for small-sized functional nanoparticles of 5 nm diameter or smaller, where current particle sizing techniques struggle to provide the required sensitivity and accuracy. There is a clear need for the development of new reliable characterisation approaches for the physico-chemical characterisation of nanoparticles with significant accuracy, particularly for the analysis of the particles in the presence of complex biological fluids. Herein, we show that the Differential Centrifugal Sedimentation can be utilised as a high-precision tool for the reliable characterisation of functional nanoparticles of different materials. We report a method to correlate the sedimentation shift with the polymer and biomolecule adsorption on the nanoparticle surface, validating the developed core–shell model. We also highlight its limit when measuring nanoparticles of smaller size and the need to use several complementary methods when characterising nanoparticle corona complexes.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-84029-8

Funder

FP7; H2020; DFG; Irish Research Council; Kidscan; University of Salford; Xunta de Galicia; RyC program; RCSI

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