X-ray Resonant Magnetic Scattering of Fe$_{3}$O$_{4}$ Nanoparticles

We are studying the magnetic order in Fe$_{3}$O$_{4}$ nanoparticles assemblies. These particles have a variety of applications, some of the more interesting ones being: drug targeting, cancer therapy, and MRI applications. We have recently (summer 2014) performed a synchrotron experiment at SLAC at Stanford, to measure the X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) and the X-ray Resonant Magnetic Scattering (XRMS) signal of nanoparticles we freshly prepared. We used the XMCD signal to extract the spin and orbital magnetic moments in Fe$_{3}$O$_{4}$. In addition, we used the XRMS patterns to extract a magnetic profile that provides information about the magnetic order in the nanoparticle assembly and its dependency on particle size and concentration.