Mesoporous Organosilica Nanoparticles with Internal Metal–Chelating Groups: Transition Metal Uptake and Gd 3+ Relaxivity
We prepared novel mesoporous organosilica nanoparticles with internal metal-chelating diethylenetriametetraacetic acid groups (DTTA-MSNPs) by co-condensation and decorated them with fluorescent moieties. Here, we studied the binding of transition metal ions such as copper(II), cobalt (II) and gadolinium (III) by DTTA-MSNPs, and found high uptake of these metals. In particular, DTTA-MSNPs uptake ~1.1×10 5 Gd 3+ per particle and possess a high r 1 relaxivity of 15.27 mM –1 s –1 . Thus, DTTA-MSNPs may find applications in metal sequestration and in MR imaging and neutron capture therapy.