Elongated akaganéite (β-FeOOH) nanoparticles were prepared by a forced hydrolysis route using FeCl3
·6H2O employing various urea concentrations. β-FeOOH nanoparticles stabilized within the SiO2 matrix were annealed at different temperatures, ranging from 500 °C to 1300 °C. It was observed that β-FeOOH underwent a temperature-induced conversion to γ-Fe2O3 and subsequently to ϵ-Fe2O3. Due to the ϵ-Fe2O3 phase formation, the coercivity rapidly increased to 16 kOe for samples annealed at 900 °C and reached values up to 21.5 kOe when annealed at 1200 °C. At a higher temperature of 1300 °C, the ϵ-Fe2O3 phase transforms mainly into the α-Fe2O3 phase, which causes the coercivity to rapidly drop to negligible values.