Magnetic Trapping of Bacteria at Low Magnetic Fields.

A suspension of non-magnetic entities in a ferrofluid is referred to as an inverse ferrofluid. Current research to trap non-magnetic entities in an inverse ferrofluid focuses on using large permanent magnets to generate high magnetic field gradients, which seriously limits Lab-on-a-Chip applications. On the other hand, in this work, trapping of non-magnetic entities, e.g., bacteria in a uniform external magnetic field was studied with a novel chip design. An inverse ferrofluid flows in a channel and a non-magnetic island is placed in the middle of this channel. The magnetic field was distorted by this island due to the magnetic susceptibility difference between this island and the surrounding ferrofluid, resulting in magnetic forces applied on the non-magnetic entities. Both the ferromagnetic particles and the non-magnetic entities, e.g., bacteria were attracted towards the island, and subsequently accumulate in different regions. The alignment of the ferrimagnetic particles and optical transparency of the ferrofluid was greatly enhanced by the bacteria at low applied magnetic fields. This work is applicable to lab-on-a-chip based detection and trapping of non-magnetic entities bacteria and cells.

Bi-directional-bi-dimensionality alignment of self-supporting Mn3O4 nanorod and nanotube arrays with different bacteriostasis and magnetism.

Self-supported Mn3O4 patterns of aligned nanorods and nanotubes were synthesized through a bi-directional-bi-dimensionality growth model by using sodium gluconate and urea as additives under mild hydrothermal conditions without the use of any substrates. In one direction, Mn3O4 grows to form one-dimensional nanorods or nanotubes, while in the other direction Mn3O4 grows into two-dimensional nanoplates to support the nanorods or nanotubes to align into arrays. These two kinds of new nanostructures, a nanotube pattern and a nanorod pattern, show similar and good bacteriostasis for Gram positive bacteria, but for Gram negative bacteria the nanotube pattern shows much better bacterial restraint than the nanorod pattern. Magnetic studies show that the nanorod arrays display similar magnetic properties to the commercial Mn3O4, while the nanotube arrays show different ferromagnetic behaviors with enhanced remnant magnetization and saturation magnetization (Ms) at low temperature.