Iron oxide nanoparticles (NPs) have been extensively studied in the last few decades for several biomedical applications such as magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic drug delivery and hyperthermia. Hyperthermia is a technique used for cancer treatment which consists in inducing a temperature of about 41-45 °C in cancerous cells through magnetic NPs and an external magnetic field. Chemical precipitation was used to produce iron oxide NPs 9 nm in size coated with oleic acid and trisodium citrate. The influence of both stabilizers on the heating ability and in vitro cytotoxicity of the produced iron oxide NPs was assessed. Physicochemical characterization of the samples confirmed that the used surfactants do not change the particles' average size and that the presence of the surfactants has a strong effect on both the magnetic properties and the heating ability. The heating ability of Fe3O4 NPs shows a proportional increase with the increase of iron concentration, although when coated with trisodium citrate or oleic acid the heating ability decreases. Cytotoxicity assays demonstrated that both pristine and trisodium citrate Fe3O4 samples do not reduce cell viability. However, oleic acid Fe3O4 strongly reduces cell viability, more drastically in the SaOs-2 cell line. The produced iron oxide NPs are suitable for cancer hyperthermia treatment and the use of a surfactant brings great advantages concerning the dispersion of NPs, also allowing better control of the hyperthermia temperature.

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[U(Tp(Me2))(2)I] exhibits at low temperatures single molecule magnet (SMM) behaviour comparable to its bipyridine derivative and related single ion U(III) complexes recently reported as SMMs. The trend of variation of the energy barrier for the magnetic relaxation in these compounds is well reproduced by quantum chemistry calculations.

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We report the synthesis of the iron(III) complex of the hexadentate Schiff base ligand nsal2trien obtained from the condensation of triethylenetetramine and 2 equiv. of 2-hydroxy-1-naphthaldehyde. The study of the salt [Fe(nsal2trien)]SCN (1) by magnetic susceptibility measurements and Mössbauer spectroscopy reveals a rather unique behavior that displays thermally induced spin crossover (SCO) with two well-separated steps at 250 (gradual transition) and 142 K (steep transition). Single crystal X-ray structures were obtained at 294, 150, and 50 K, for the high spin (HS), intermediate (Int), and low spin (LS) phases. The HS and LS phases are isostructural, and based on a single Fe(III) site (either HS or LS) an unusual symmetry break occurs in the transition to the Int ordered phase, where the unit cell includes two distinct Fe(III) sites and is based on a repetition of the [HS-LS] motif. The two-step SCO behavior of 1 must result from the existence of structural constraints preventing the full conversion HS ↔ LS in a single step.