A review: Synthetic strategy control of magnetite nanoparticles production

Iron oxide nanoparticles excite researcher interest in biomedical applications due to their low cost, biocompatibility and superparamagnetism properties. Magnetic iron oxide especially magnetite (Fe3O4) possessed a superparamagnetic behaviour at certain nanosize which beneficial for drug and gene delivery, diagnosis and imaging. The properties of nanoparticles mainly depend on their synthesis procedure. There has been a massive effort in developing the best synthetic strategies to yield appropriate physico-chemical properties namely co-precipitation, thermal decomposition, microemulsions, hydrothermal and sol-gel. In this review, it is discovered that magnetite nanoparticles are best yielded by co-precipitation method owing to their simplicity and large production. However, its magnetic saturation is within range of 70-80 emu/g which is lower than thermal decomposition and hydrothermal methods (80-90 emu/g) at 100 nm. Dimension wise, less than 100 nm is produced by co-precipitation method at 70°C-80°C while thermal decomposition and hydrothermal methods could produce less than 50 nm but at very high temperature ranging between 200°C and 300°C. Thus, co-precipitation is the optimum method for pre-compliance magnetite nanoparticles preparation (e.g., 100 nm is fit enough for biomedical applications) since thermal decomposition and hydrothermal required more sophisticated facilities.