Stabilization of temperature during magnetic hyperthermia by Ce substituted magnetite nanoparticles

We report here magnetic hyperthermia using nanoparticles of CexFe3−xO4 (x = 0.01, 0.05, 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5) during which temperature was found to be stabilizing near 42 °C. This happens despite of their high saturation magnetization (MS) and Curie temperature (TC) values. It was observed that by selecting an appropriate magnetic field the temperature can be rose exactly near the therapeutic temperature and thus it will help to selectively kill the cancerous cells leaving normal cells unaffected. These nanoparticles (size around 8-15 nm) were produced by single step microwave refluxing technique. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis demonstrates that samples were essentially single phase except for x = 0.5 sample. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) study for the samples demonstrated that Ce was present in both Ce3+ and Ce4+ states. The saturation magnetization value of the samples decreased sharply from 62 Am2/kg for x = 0.01 to 19 Am2/kg for x = 0.1. This value further decreased with increased Ce doping.