Mesoporous Organosilica Nanoparticles with Internal Metal-Chelating Groups: Transition Metal Uptake and Gd3+ 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. 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 similar to 1.1x10(5) Gd3+ 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.