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16
Biosensing and Cancer Treatment
with Magnetic Nanoparticles
Stefan Bossmann, Viktor Chikan, and Raj Kumar Dani
16.1 Introduction to Magnetic Nanomaterials: Why Nano?
The term “nano” stands for dwarf in Greek. Quantitatively, it is a prex for one billionth.
For length, 1 nm means one billionth of a meter. By comparison, 1 nm is approximately
1/50,000–1/100,000 as thick as a human hair, or 3.5 atoms of gold lined up in a row equal
1 nm. All particles with at least one dimension between 1 and 100 nm fall in the category
of nanoparticles (NPs). NPs have attracted great attention of scientists as they bridge bulk
materials with atomic or mo