The effect of the magnetic nanoparticle’s size dependence of the relaxation time constant on the specific loss power of magnetic nanoparticle hyperthermia

Abstract

Magnetic nanoparticle hyperthermia is a cancer treatment in which magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) are subjected to an alternating magnetic field to induce heat in the tumor. The generated heat of MNPs is characterized by the specific loss power (SLP) due to relaxation phenomena of the MNP. Up to now, several models have been proposed to predict the SLP, one of which is the Linear Response Theory. One parameter in this model is the relaxation time constant. In this contribution, we employ a macrospin model based on the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation to investigate the relation between the Gilbert damping parameter and the relaxation time constant. This relaxation time has a pre-factor τ0 which is often taken as a fixed value ranging between 10−8 and 10−12s. However, in reality it has small size dependence. Here, the influence of this size dependence on the calculation of the SLP is demonstrated, consequently improving the accuracy of this estimate.