This article reviews recent progress in the fabrication, characterization, and analysis of large area arrays of sub-100-nm magnetic particles made by lithographic techniques. Particles are made by electrodeposition, evaporation and liftoff, or sputtering and etching, leading to a wide range of shapes, compositions, and microstructures. The remanent states, magnetic hysteresis, and uniformity of the particles and the interparticle interactions will be discussed.

Malignant tumors are considered “unresectable” if they are adhere to vital structures or the surgery would cause irreversible damages to the patients. Though a variety of cytotoxic drugs and radiation therapies are currently available in clinical practice to treat such tumor masses, these therapeutic modalities are always associated with substantial side effects. Here, we report an injectable nanoparticle-based internal radiation source that potentially offers more efficacious treatment of unresectable solid tumors without significant adverse side effects. Using a highly efficient incorporation procedure, palladium-103, a brachytherapy radioisotope in clinical practice, was coated to monodispersed hollow gold nanoparticles with a diameter about 120 nm, to form ¹⁰³Pd@Au nanoseeds. The therapeutic efficacy of ¹⁰³Pd@Au nanoseeds were assessed when intratumorally injected into a prostate cancer xenograft model. Five weeks after a single-dose treatment, a significant tumor burden reduction (>80%) was observed without noticeable side effects on the liver, spleen and other organs. Impressively, >95% nanoseeds were retained inside the tumors as monitored by Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) with the gamma emissions of ¹⁰³Pd. These findings show that this nanoseed-based brachytherapy has the potential to provide a theranostic solution to unresectable solid tumors.

The magnetic properties of a 100-nm-period large-area array of regular, 30-nm polycrystalline nickel particles have been studied. The particles are found to reverse incoherently, and their hysteresis behavior has been compared with a computational model over a range of temperatures. Excellent agreement with the model is obtained, indicating that switching of the particles is dominated by the reversal of approximately 10-nm-diameter volumes within each particle. These switching volumes are identified with the columnar grains in the polycrystalline nickel, showing that the microstructure determines the magnetic behavior of the particles. This explains the anisotropy distribution and the onset of superparamagnetism in the sample. Incoherent reversal occurs even though the particles are only 1.5 times the exchange length in nickel, a size at which nearly uniform rotation is expected to occur if the particles were homogeneous.