Nanoparticles: Magnetism and Applications

Abstract

Magnetic nanoparticles are of great interest due to their multiple technological implementations like biomedical and magnetic resonance imaging applications. Several methods are used in magnetic nanoparticle fabrication, and all of them are based on the bottom-up and the top-down approaches. The top-down approach is used to produce nanoparticles from a large-scale material, in contrast with bottom-up approach that built nanoparticles from small molecules. Magnetic nanoparticle shows interesting phenomena when the size goes below a certain value as the superparamagnetism. Superparamagnetic particles show high magnetization with zero coercive field, preventing their agglomeration after the removing of magnetic field, nominating them as good candidates for medical applications. The magnetic properties of nanoparticles depend on several factors, such as size, shape, and morphology. Therefore, it can be said that the magnetic properties of nanoparticles can be tuned to match the desired application.