Novel method to fabricate magnetic hollow silica particles with anisotropic structure

Magnetic Fe3O4/SiO2 particles with rod-like structure and hollow interior have been constructed by a template method. During this procedure, beta-FeOOH was firstly synthesized as the rod-like template to fabricate beta-FeOOH/SiO2 core/shell-like particles. These beta-FeOOH/SiO2 nanorods could be further transformed to Fe3O4/SiO2 via the decomposition-reducing method. These particles showed ferromagnetic behavior at room temperature with high coercivity and may provide potential applications in biological area. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.