Developing a characterization method for iron-oxide nanoparticles through the hyphenated technique using LC-ICP-MS

• Grant number: 23/05547-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2023
• End date: October 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Chemistry - Analytical Chemistry
• Principal Investigator: Marco Aurelio Zezzi Arruda
• Grantee: João Gabriel Veneziani Kamezawa
• Supervisor: Maria Montes Bayon
• Host Institution: Instituto de Química (IQ). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidad de Oviedo, Spain
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/13166-3 - Nanoionomics applied to soybean cultivation, BP.IC

Abstract

The production and exportation of soybean represent an important base for the Brazilian economy. The various applications such as food, oil, and animal ration make the seeds an important commodity. However, there are many obstacles to the production, storage, and transportation of soybean seeds. For this, the development of new technologies to improve productivity and reduce the use of fertilizers and pesticides is of interest to the country. An example is the loss of storage grains due to fungus infestation. Recently the use of nanoparticles has shown great potential to solve these requests. Nanoparticles have singular properties that may be very useful in agriculture. There is evidence of the antifungal activity of iron-oxide nanoparticles. Although, little is known about the interaction between plants and nanoparticles. The analysis of nanoparticles in these media is very hard because of their characteristics. There are techniques to analyze the nanoparticles characteristics however, they also present some limitations. Few of these techniques allow the evaluation of more than one characteristic, such as the concentration and size of nanoparticles. The development of analytical techniques for the investigation of nanoparticles is an important step in understanding the potential of these particles. Thus, the present project aims to develop an analytical method to determine the size and concentration of nanoparticles using an HPLC-ICP-MS system. The method may assist in the investigation of nanoparticles effects on plants and their derivates. When possible, the results obtained by HPLC-ICP-MS will be compared with those obtained by other complementary strategies like transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and single-particle ICP-MS (sp-ICP-MS). (AU)