Preparation and Characterization of Zinc Ferrite and Gadolinium Iron Garnet Composite for Biomagnetic Applications

Cancer is a major worldwide public health problem. Although there have already been astonishing advances in cancer diagnosis and treatment, the scientific community continues to make huge efforts to develop new methods to treat cancer. The main objective of this work is to prepare, using a green sol-gel method with coconut water powder (CWP), a new nanocomposite with a mixture of Gd₃Fe₅O₁₂ and ZnFe₂O₄, which has never been synthesized previously. Therefore, we carried out a structural (DTA-TG and X-ray diffraction), morphological (SEM), and magnetic (VSM and hyperthermia) characterization of the prepared samples. The prepared nanocomposite denoted a saturation magnetization of 11.56 emu/g at room temperature with a ferromagnetic behavior and with a specific absorption rate (SAR) value of 0.5 ± 0.2 (W/g). Regarding cytotoxicity, for concentrations < 10 mg/mL, it does not appear to be toxic. Although the obtained results were interesting, the high particle size was identified as a problem for the use of this nanocomposite.