Monday, 14 October 2024 14:40

Magnetic Micro- and Nanodisks: A Bridge Between Thin Films and Nanoparticles – The contribution to the nM2-Lab of CNR-ISM to the new e-book Magnetic Nanoparticles: Materials Engineering, Properties and Applications.

Magnetic micro- and nanodisks represent a peculiar class of systems that combines the benefits of both thin films and nanoparticles, thus representing a bridge between them. The progress in designing, fabricating, and manipulating micro- and nanodisk systems is continuously enhancing the ability to tailor their properties, opening new opportunities to use them in fundamental studies and to explore new frontiers in materials science, physics, and other related fields.

This chapter, featured in the e-book *Magnetic Nanoparticles: Materials Engineering, Properties and Applications* within the 2024 eBook Collection, part of the Nanoscience & Nanotechnology series (Royal Society of Chemistry, eds. A. López-Ortega and A. Gómez Roca), delves into cutting-edge fabrication methods, including cost-effective lithography techniques. It also presents case studies on magnetic disks engineered for biomedical applications, thereby highlighting both current challenges and future prospects for this innovative technology.
When matter is reduced to the nanoscale, its physical and chemical properties change dramatically, leading to unique functionalities. Nanostructured magnetic materials, which include films and nanoparticles, exemplify this, showing different behaviors compared to bulk materials. While thin films, reduced to the nanoscale in one dimension, exhibit new physical properties, it's the interface between layers in complex heterostructures that holds promise for future applications. Nanoparticles, typically below 100 nanometers, can be fine-tuned through chemical composition, size, shape, and surface functionalization. Both films and nanoparticles can be used in biomedical applications, with specific choices depending on the desired outcome. Films, for example, are used in lab-on-chip devices for cell manipulation, while magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) are crucial for targeted drug delivery and tracking in real-time, or even for magnetic hyperthermia to treat diseases. Recently, micro- and nano-disks have emerged, bridging the gap between films and nanoparticles. These disks, with thicknesses in the nanometer range and lateral dimensions of a few microns, offer unique opportunities for biomedical applications.

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