Today’s need of the growing industries is to get better products with long life which depends upon the production processes. This requires enhanced thermal properties of the fluid as well as the components surrounding to it. Therefore, this study reveals the flow of several water-based nanofluids past an expanding sheet. Oxide nanoparticles, such as Al2O3 and CuO, are considered in the base liquid water to show their behavior on the flow phenomena. Further, dissipative heat properties due to magnetization, i.e. Joule and viscous dissipation enrich the study. The novelty of this study is the consideration of KKL “(Koo–Kleinstreuer–Li) correlation” for the conductivity and viscosity plays its important role in which the influence of Brownian activity is vital. The utilization of similarity rules is beneficial for the transformation of the governing equations into non-dimensional form. Further, the shooting-based Runge–Kutta technique is useful for the solution of these set of equations. The characterization of diversified components likely the particle concentration, magnetic and buoyancy parameter on the velocity distribution along with the Eckert number, and thermal radiation on the energy profile is obtained and deliberated briefly.