REVIEW PAPER Synthetic Study and Merits of Fe 3 O 4 Nanoparticles as Emerging Material Saba Jamil 1 • Muhammad Ramzan Saeed Ashraf Janjua 2,3 Received: 26 May 2017 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 Abstract Iron (III) oxide magnetic nanoparticles have provided us a multitude of new tools to explore biological and other scientific systems on small length scales. The opening up of single cell or single molecule phenomena to experimental investigations present an important step forward and promises to yield new insights. This review depicts some important and most commonly used methodologies for the engineering of iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles including superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles and ultra-small superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles, important features of these synthesis methods and their applications in different fields of life proving it as an emerging material. Most important task in nanoscale synthesis of iron oxide is to control morphology and contain it within a narrow size distribution. These processes include sol–gel method, hydrothermal method, sonochemical method, co-precipitation and micro emulsion methods. These processes are essentially highly controlled to fabricate the desire material with appropriate properties. Synthesis of mono disperse nanometer-sized magnetic particles of metal alloys and metal oxides is an active research area because of their potential technological ramifications ranging from ultrahigh-density magnetic storage media, to biological imaging. Size, size distribution, shape, and dimensionality are important for the properties of these magnetic materials. Nanoparticles of various iron oxides (Fe 3 O 4 and c ¸-Fe 2 O 3 in particular) have been widely used in a range of biological applications. Iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles can be designed to exhibit & Saba Jamil Saba_Hrb@yahoo.com & Muhammad Ramzan Saeed Ashraf Janjua Janjua@kfupm.edu.sa; Janjua@uos.edu.pk 1 Super Light Materials and Nanotechnology Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan 2 Department of Chemistry, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 3 Department of Chemistry, University of Sargodha, Sargodha 40100, Pakistan 123 J Clust Sci DOI 10.1007/s10876-017-1256-3