Induction Heating Analysis of Surface-Functionalized Nanoscale CoFe₂O₄ for Magnetic Fluid Hyperthermia toward Noninvasive Cancer Treatment

Abstract

Oleic acid-coated cobalt ferrite nanoparticles were synthesized using the chemical co-precipitation route and characterized by standard techniques for structure, morphology, and magnetic properties analysis. The Rietveld refined X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern of CoFe₂O₄ nanoparticles indicated the formation of a cubic-spinel single-phase structure with the F<i>d</i>3̅<i>m</i> space group. The average crystallite size (∼12 nm) confirmed the nanocrystalline appearance of the prepared CoFe₂O₄ nanoparticles. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images revealed the spherical nature of both (CoFe₂O₄) and (OA-CoFe₂O₄) samples. The absorption bands in the Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectrum at ∼3418, 3026, 1628, 1404, 1068, 845, 544, and 363 cm^-1 affirmed the spinel ferrite formation and OA attachment. The M-H curve recorded at room temperature showed the superparamagnetic nature of the CoFe₂O₄ nanoparticles with moderate saturation magnetization (∼78 emu/gm). The blocking temperature of the prepared CoFe₂O₄ nanoparticles obtained from the field-cooled and zero-field-cooled (FC-ZFC) curve was estimated to be 144 K. Further, the characterized surface-modified CoFe₂O₄ was then added in ethylene glycol/water with various concentrations and characterized by the induction heating technique for the evaluation of their self-heating characteristics. A series of temperature versus time measurements were made by varying the ethylene glycol/water proportion for better understanding of the self-heating characteristics of the prepared CoFe₂O₄ nanoparticles. All of the findings display the applicability of the surface-modified CoFe₂O₄ nanoparticles in magnetic fluid hyperthermia toward noninvasive cancer treatment and other bio-applications.