The renal-clearing feature of inorganic nanoparticles is highly desired for their transition to the clinic. Although high-quality ultrasmall inorganic nanoparticles can be routinely synthesized via the thermal decomposition method, rendering them suitable for in vivo application without enlarging their hydrodynamic size is still challenging. In this study, we report a facile and general method for phase transfer of hydrophobic inorganic nanoparticles from the organic phase to the aqueous phase using a zwitterionic silylation agent. The phase transfer process can be accomplished in one pot within minutes and was found to be suitable for a wide variety of inorganic nanoparticles. Interestingly, the resulting nanoparticles showed excellent colloidal stability, minimal effective hydrodynamic size, and low nonspecific affinities toward serum proteins. Thus, nanoparticles with the desired renal-clearing property were obtained. These features rendered the phase transfer method reported here considerably advantageous over previous polymer-based strategies and will be useful for preparing biocompatible nanomaterials for biomedical applications.

中文翻译：

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使用两性离子磺基甜菜碱硅氧烷的疏水性纳米颗粒的相转移产生高度生物相容性和紧凑的表面

无机纳米粒子的肾脏清除功能非常需要其过渡到临床。尽管可以通过热分解方法常规合成高质量的超小无机纳米颗粒，使其适合于体内在不增大其流体力学尺寸的情况下进行应用仍然具有挑战性。在这项研究中，我们报告了一种使用两性离子甲硅烷基化剂将疏水性无机纳米粒子从有机相转移到水相的简便且通用的方法。相转移过程可以在几分钟内在一个罐中完成，并且发现适用于多种无机纳米粒子。有趣的是，所得的纳米颗粒显示出优异的胶体稳定性，最小的有效流体动力学尺寸以及对血清蛋白的低非特异性亲和力。因此，获得了具有期望的肾清除特性的纳米颗粒。