The Role of Anisotropy in Distinguishing Domination of Néel or Brownian Relaxation Contribution to Magnetic Inductive Heating: Orientations for Biomedical Applications

Magnetic inductive heating (MIH) has been a topic of great interest because of its potential applications, especially in biomedicine. In this paper, the parameters characteristic for magnetic inductive heating power including maximum specific loss power (SLP(max)), optimal nanoparticle diameter (D(c)) and its width (ΔD(c)) are considered as being dependent on magnetic nanoparticle anisotropy (K). The calculated results suggest 3 different Néel-domination (N), overlapped Néel/Brownian (NB), and Brownian-domination (B) regions. The transition from NB- to B-region changes abruptly around critical anisotropy K(c). For magnetic nanoparticles with low K (K < K(c)), the feature of SLP peaks is determined by a high value of D(c) and small ΔD(c) while those of the high K (K > K(c)) are opposite. The decreases of the SLP(max) when increasing polydispersity and viscosity are characterized by different rates of d(SLP(max))/dσ and d(SLP(max))/dη depending on each domination region. The critical anisotropy K(c) varies with the frequency of an alternating magnetic field. A possibility to improve heating power via increasing anisotropy is analyzed and deduced for Fe(3)O(4) magnetic nanoparticles. For MIH application, the monodispersity requirement for magnetic nanoparticles in the B-region is less stringent, while materials in the N- and/or NB-regions are much more favorable in high viscous media. Experimental results on viscosity dependence of SLP for CoFe(2)O(4) and MnFe(2)O(4) ferrofluids are in good agreement with the calculations. These results indicated that magnetic nanoparticles in the N- and/or NB-regions are in general better for application in elevated viscosity media.