Review: Progress in the Preparation of Iron Based Magnetic Nanoparticles for Biomedical Applications

With unique physical properties, chemical properties, and biological effects, magnetic nanomaterials are important functional materials in many fields. In the past decades, iron based magnetic nanomaterials have attracted much attention in the biomedicine field due to their superior magnetic properties and great potential in biomedical applications. In particular, magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (MIONPs) have been playing a crucial role in the biomedicine field because of their diagnostic and therapeutic functions. Meanwhile, MIONPs are benign, low toxic, biocompatible, and biodegradable, so they are the only inorganic magnetic nanomaterials approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for clinical use at present. In this review, we mainly introduce the progress in the preparation of iron based magnetic nanomaterials for biomedical applications, including pure iron nanoparticles, iron-based alloy nanoparticles, and MIONPs, with a focus on MIONPs. Also, we summarize the preparation methods of MIONPs and point out the importance of their developments.