materials Review Magnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticle (IONP) Synthesis to Applications: Present and Future Nene Ajinkya 1,* , Xuefeng Yu 1, Poonam Kaithal 2, Hongrong Luo 1, Prakash Somani 3 and Seeram Ramakrishna 4 1 Materials and Interfaces Center, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen 518055, China;
[email protected] (X.Y.);
[email protected] (H.L.) 2 Department of Molecular and Cellular Engineering, Jacob Institute of Biotechnology and Bioengineering, SHUATS, Allahabad 211007, India;
[email protected] 3 Center for Grand Challenges and Green Technologies, Applied Science Innovations Pvt. Ltd., Pune 411041, India;
[email protected] 4 Center for Nanofibers and Nanotechnology, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576, Singapore;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 13 August 2020; Accepted: 20 September 2020; Published: 18 October 2020 Abstract: Iron oxides are chemical compounds which have different polymorphic forms, including γ-Fe2O3 (maghemite), Fe3O4 (magnetite), and FeO (wustite). Among them, the most studied are γ-Fe2O3 and Fe3O4, as they possess extraordinary properties at the nanoscale (such as super paramagnetism, high specific surface area, biocompatible etc.), because at this size scale, the quantum effects affect matter behavior and optical, electrical and magnetic properties. Therefore, in the nanoscale, these materials become ideal for surface functionalization and modification in various applications such as separation techniques, magnetic sorting (cells and other biomolecules etc.), drug delivery, cancer hyperthermia, sensing etc., and also for increased surface area-to-volume ratio, which allows for excellent dispersibility in the solution form. The current methods used are partially and passively mixed reactants, and, thus, every reaction has a different proportion of all factors which causes further difficulties in reproducibility.