Synthesis and characterization of the Fe3O4@SiO2-[Eu(DBM)(3)phen]Cl-3 luminomagnetic microspheres

In this paper, we report fabrication and characterization of the luminomagnetic microspheres (denoted as Fe3O4@SiO2-[Eu(DBM)(3)phen]Cl-3). The fluorescent magnetic microspheres were synthesized via preparing Eu(DBM)(3)phen]Cl-3@SiO2-NH2 nanoparticles first by combination of the solvent precipitation method and the Stober method, followed by grafting the fluorescent nanoparticles onto Fe3O4. The morphological, textural, magnetic and photoluminescence properties were well-characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID), and photoluminescence spectra. The experimental results show that the core-shell structured luminomagnetic microspheres with an average size of ca. 570 nm possessed high magnetization saturation value (61.7 emu/g) with a negligible coercivity and strong red emission peak (614 nm) from D-5(0)-F-7(2) transition of Eu3+ ions, indicating that they have potential applications for optical imaging and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved