Magnetic nanoparticles have shown great potential in biomedical applications, such as magnetic separation, drug delivery, MRI contrast enhancement and magnetic hyperthermia. Superparamagnetic nanoparticles have been widely investigated, because their zero-remanence and small particle size can meet the requirements – avoiding agglomeration and excellent colloidal stability. However, superparamgnetism has relatively poor magnetic performance for some practice applications due to their reduced magnetization, requirement of a large field for saturation and low magnetic susceptibility. In order to enhance magnetic response, non-superparamagnetic nanoparticles have been explored for biomedical applications recently, particularly hyperthermia and MRI. Exchange coupling has been used to enhance magnetic anisotropy energy, in order to achieve a large hysteresis loss. We have focused on magnetic nanoparticles with relatively large shape anisotropy, such as octahedron, disc and ring. Particularly, nanodisc and nanorings have good colloidal stability due to their vortex domain structure. These nanoparticles with relatively large shape anisotropy have shown excellent potential for biomedical applications, including MRI and hyperthermia.
Dr Jun DING obtained PhD from Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany in 1990. After working as Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at University of Western Australia for 6 years, Dr Ding joined National University of Singapore as a Faculty (NUS). Now, he is Professor at Department of Materials Science & Engineering (NUS) and Visiting Professor at NIMTE, Chinese Academy of Science. Dr Ding has been working in magnetic materials for 25 years. He has published over 300 papers. His current research work focuses on nanomagnetics and magnetic nanoparticles for bio-medical applications.