Integrating conformal ferrite coatings with magnetic nanoswimmers has been described, which can provide a promising combination of functionalities such as motion in biological fluids, chemical stability, cytocompatibility etc. The ferrite coatings on the magnetic nanoswimmers makes them stable in biofluids such as blood, facilitating the first successful voyage of artificial nanomotors in human blood at such negligible dilutions as demonstrated in the paper [1].
Figure: (Left) SEM images of uncoated and ferrite coated nanoswimmers. (Right) Microscopic image of nanoswimmer in 1.8x diluted human blood.
[1] Pooyath Lekshmy Venugopalan, Ranajit Sai, Yashoda Chandorkar, Bikramjit Basu, Srinivasrao Shivashankar, and Ambarish Ghosh, Nano Letters, 14, 1968 (2014).