In recent years, there have been significant efforts to develop magnetic nanoparticles for biomedical applications. This has included work in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), hyperthermia for cancer and arthritis treatment, and drug delivery. However, the fundamental characterization methods for magnetic nanoparticles-both individually and collectively-as well as some of the important application parameters (i.e., T1 and T2 times in imaging and heat output in hyperthermia) have lagged behind. This research area investigates the properties of magnetic nanoparticles-both individually and collectively-like saturation magnetization, coercivity, exchange bias field, anisotropy, surface spin canting, and blocking temperature. In addition, since every nanoparticle produced is not identical, it also utilizes new techniques like First Order Reversal Curves (FORC) to characterize the distributions in these properties. A variety of experimental equipment is used, including superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometers, vibrating sample magnetometers (VSM), SQUID VSM, Mössbauer spectroscopy, ferromagnetic resonance, x-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, and small-angle neutron scattering. Concurrently, another research area focuses on developing methods to quantify the primary characteristic for a particular application, including but not limited to a microcalorimeter to quantify heat output for hyperthermia, and T1 and T2 standard reference materials for MRI.

 

key words

Biomedicine; Drug delivery; Hyperthermia; Magnetic nanoparticles; Magnetic property distributions; Magnetic resonance imaging; Nanomedicine; Superparamagnetism;

Citizenship:  Open to U.S. citizens

Level:  Open to Postdoctoral applicants