Magnetic hyperthermia efficiency and MRI contrast sensitivity of colloidal soft/hard ferrite nanoclusters.

The use of magnetic nanostructures as theranostic agents is a multiplex task as physiochemical and biochemical properties including excellent magneto-responsive properties, low toxicity, colloidal stability and facile surface engineering capability are all required. Nonetheless, much progress has been made in recent years synthesis of "all-in-one" MNPs remain unambiguously challenging. Towards this direction, in this study is presented a facile incorporation of a soft magnetic phase (MnFeO NPs) with a hard phase (CoFeO NPs) in the presence of the biocompatible polymer sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), into spherical and compact bi-magnetic nanoclusters (NCs) with modulated magnetic properties that critically enhance hyperthermic efficiency and MRI contrast effect. Hydrophobic MnFeO and CoFeO NPs coated with oleylamine of the same size (9 nm) were used as primary building units for the formation of the bi-magnetic NCs through a microemulsion approach where a set of experiments were conducted to identify the optimal concentration of SDS (19.5 mM) for the cluster formation. Additionally, homo-magnetic NCs of MnFeO NPs and CoFeO NPs, respectively were synthesized for comparative studies. The presence of distinct magnetic phases within the bi-magnetic NCs resulting in synergistic behavior, where the soft phase offers moderate coercivity H and the hard one high magnetization M. Increased specific loss power (SLP) value was obtained for the bi-magnetic system (525 W/g) when compared with the homo-magnetic NCs (104 W/g for MnNCs and 223 W/g for CoNCs) under field conditions of 25 kA/m and 765 kHz. Relaxivities (r) of the bi-magnetic NCs were also higher (81.8 mM s) than those of the homo-magnetic NCs (47.4 mM s for MnNCs and 3.1 mM s for CoNCs), while the high r/r value renders the system suitable for T-weighted MRI imaging.