Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Detection Of Iron (Iii) Using Magnetic Nanoparticles, Kaiya Hansen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this work was to develop an iron (III) sensor which can be mounted on buoys and gliders and automatically measure iron (III) in the ocean. The method investigated in this thesis was based on anchoring the iron (III) chelator desferrioxamine B (DFB) to magnetic particles. DFB selectively binds iron (III), resulting in a complex which produces a broad absorbance band at 430 nm. This band can be measured via UV-Vis spectroscopy (UV-Vis). However, measuring oceanic iron (III) directly in solution is difficult because the concentrations can be very low, sometimes less than 1 nM. This problem could …