Development of Functional Iron-based Nanomaterials for Biomedical and Energy Conversion Applications

Abstract

Iron-based nanomaterials, an important branch of nanomaterials, are widelyinvestigated and applied in various fields. As an essential element in the human body,iron participates in a wide range of biological processes, including oxygen transport,electron transport, biomolecule synthesis, and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) synthesis,so iron-derived nanomaterials have the potential for biomedical applications. Iron is atransition metal element with unfilled 3d orbitals and different valence state. The abovecharacteristics of iron allow the formation of stable compounds and facilitate theelectron transfer. Thus, the iron-based nanomaterials could be used as electrochemicalcatalysts in energy conversion applications. However, the potential of iron-basednanomaterials in biomedical and energy conversion applications has not been fullyexplored.In this thesis, a serial of iron-based nanomaterials including iron-based metal-organicframeworks (hollow MIL-100 (Fe) and PCN-333 (Fe)), iron-based oxyhydroxide(MoFe0.5OxCo(OH)2-x), and iron-based sulfides (FeCo(NiS2)4-C/A) have been designedand synthesized. Hollow MIL-100 (Fe) reported in Chapter 3 exhibited a highdoxorubicin loading capacity and a mitochondrial targeting ability in breast cancertreatment. In addition, a green synthetic method to obtain hollow structural MIL-100(Fe) has been proposed and realized. Based on the findings of Chapter 3, hierarchicalPCN-333 (Fe) with larger pores loading with horseradish peroxidase (HRP) and 3-Indoleacetic acid (IAA) has been developed in Chapter 4. In vitro and in vivoexperiments supported that HRP and IAA loaded PCN-333 (Fe) nanoparticles(HRP/IAA@PCN-333 (Fe)) were effective in prodrug therapy (EAPT) of breast cancer.Molybdenum-Iron-Cobalt oxyhydroxide with rich oxygen vacancies reported inChapter 5 exhibited excellent performance in oxygen evolution reaction (OER) bytuning the composition of iron in the compounds. Furthermore, based on the findingsof Chapter 5, heterostructural Iron-Cobalt-Nickel sulfides with richcrystalline/amorphous interfaces have been synthesized in the work presented Appendix by tuning the ratio of iron in the nanostructure and they exhibited remarkable performance as a bifunctional catalyst for water splitting.