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In recent years , gold and magnetic nanoparticles have showed great potential in biomedical applications . Magnetic nanoparticles can be used in both in - vivo and in -vitro applications such as drug and gene delivery , hyperthermia treatment of cancer , MRI contrast enhancement , cell labeling and magnetic separation . Due to the surface plasmon resonance effect (SPR ) , gold nanoparticles strongly absorb and scatter visible and infrared light in resonance with SPR . They have been exploited for bioimaging and photothermal therapy applications . This is why different sizes and shapes of Au nanoparticles exhibit different colors .In this thesis , we are investigating a new type of nanoparticles , granular magnetic Au particles . The particle size ranges from 10nm to 200nm . These nanoparticles have the potential to combine the properties of both gold nanoparticle and the magnetic nanoparticle into one nano entity to provide multifunctionality . . For example , magnetic Au nanoparticles can be concentrated to a tumor sites by an external magnetic field gradient and photothermal therapy can be performed to locally kill tumor cells . A scalable , straight forward and inexpensive process using electrochemical deposition is being developed to produce these multifunctional nanoparticles .On a polycarbonate template , multilayers of gold and cobalt were deposited through electrodeposition . The deposition time of both gold and cobalt were varied to manipulate the thickness to achieve the superparamagnetic property . Before depositing the multilayers , gold , cobalt or copper was used as a sacrificial layer . The magnetic properties were measured using AGM or VSM . The structural properties were characterized through SEM and TEM . |
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