Uniform, highly water-dispersible and ultra-small Fe3O4 nanoparticles were synthesized via a modified one-step coprecipitation approach. The prepared Fe3O4 nanoparticles not only show good magnetic properties, long-term stability in a biological environment, but also exhibit good biocompatibility in cell viability and hemolysis assay. Due to the ultra-small sized and highly water-dispersibility, they exhibit excellent relaxivity properties, the 1.7 nm sized Fe3O4 nanoparticles reveal a low r2/r1 ratio of 2.03 (r1 = 8.20 mM(-1) s(-1), r2 = 16.67 mM(-1) s(-1)); and the 2.2 nm sized Fe3O4 nanoparticles also appear to have a low r2/r1 ratio of 4.65 (r1 = 6.15 mM(-1) s(-1), r2 = 28.62 mM(-1) s(-1)). This demonstrates that the proposed ultra-small Fe3O4 nanoparticles have great potential as a new type of T1 magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents. Especially, the 2.2 nm sized Fe3O4 nanoparticles, have a competitive r1 value and r2 value compared to commercial contrasting agents such as Gd-DTPA (r1 = 4.8 mM(-1) s (-1)), and SHU-555C (r2 = 69 mM(-1) s(-1)). In vitro and in vivo imaging experiments, show that the 2.2 nm sized Fe3O4 nanoparticles exhibit great contrast enhancement, long-term circulation, and low toxicity, which enable these ultra-small sized Fe3O4 nanoparticles to be promising as T1 and T2 dual contrast agents in clinical settings.

Fe3O4@NIR semiconducting polymer nanoparticles were used for both T1-, T2-weighted MRI and fluorescence imaging of targeted tumors.

A novel, efficient and facile protocol for the synthesis of a series of [Ru(NHC)(CO3)(p-cymene)] complexes is reported. This family of Ru-NHC complexes was obtained from imidazol(in)ium tetrafluoroborate or imidazolium hydrogen...

A straightforward synthetic procedure to well‐defined, air‐ and moisture‐ stable trans‐[Pd(NHC)Cl2(DMS/THT)] (NHC=IPr, SIPr, IMes, IPrCl, IPr*, IPr#) pre‐catalysts is reported. These complexes were obtained by reacting NHC ⋅ HCl imidazolium salts with trans‐[PdCl2(DMS/THT)2] precursors with the assistance of the weak base K2CO3 in green acetone at 40 °C. The scalability of this protocol was demonstrated. The catalytic activity of the synthesized complexes was studied in the Buchwald‐Hartwig and Suzuki‐Miyaura reactions. Remarkably, most of the synthesized complexes exhibit higher catalytic activity with respect to their PEPPSI congeners in the Buchwald‐Hartwig amination in 2‐MeTHF. In particular, complex trans‐[Pd(IPr#)Cl2(DMS)] enabled the coupling of various (hetero)aryl chlorides and primary/secondary amines with a 0.2 mol% catalyst loading. In addition, trans‐[Pd(IPr)Cl2(DMS)] showed excellent performance in the room‐temperature Suzuki‐Miyaura reaction involving various (hetero)aryl chlorides and aryl boronic acids. In summary, the synthesized complexes, especially trans‐[Pd(NHC)Cl2(DMS)], can be considered as greener alternatives to classical PEPPSI type catalysts based on the lower toxicity of the throw‐away DMS ligand compared to 3‐chloropyridine.