Synthesis and spectroscopic investigations of iron oxide nano-particles for biomedical applications in the treatment of cancer cells

•Ferric oxide nano-particles have an anticancer medicinal application.•This article aimed to synthesize of Fe2O3 nanoparticles using a friendly procedure.•Ferric(III) complexes of the hippuric, itaconic, and tyrosine amino acid used as a precursors.•The Fe2O3 prepared has a single phase with particle size 20–60 nm.•Iron oxide nano-particles affected on the treatment of breast carcinoma cancer cells.

Recently, upon the great importance of synthesized nano-particles especially ferric oxides on medicinal applications, these nano-particles have been prepared here using friendly and low cost biological precursors moieties via a thermal decomposition method. The Fe2O3 nano-particles preparation method is based on thermal degradation of ferric complexes of hippuric acid, itaconic acid, or tyrosine amino acid at 600 °C. The used precursors were characterized by several characterization techniques such as microanalysis, conductance, infrared spectra, electronic spectra, and thermogravimetric (TG/DTG). The calcinations stages were identified from the thermogravimetric analyses of ferric complexes. The narrow size distribution in nano-scale range for the Fe2O3 crystals have been studied using X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectrometer (EDX) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analyzer. XRD data indicate that a single phase Fe2O3 nano-particles are obtained with particle size ranging from 20 to 60 nm. The cytotoxic activity of the Fe2O3 nanoparticles was tested against the breast carcinoma cells (MCF-7 cell line). The results of inhibitory concentration fifty (IC50) were existed within the 3.10–3.81 μg limit.