Fabrication of a multifunctional magnetic-fluorescent material for medical applications.

Multifunctional biocompatible materials have evoked considerable interest in the field of medical applications. Here we report the thermal decomposition preparation of homogeneous fluorescent-magnetic particles with a composite structure containing CoFe2O4 nanoparticles as nucleation seeds for fluorescent Gd2-xO3:Eux. The composite exhibited a wide range of fluorescence transitions in the whole visible spectrum, displaying 18 different emission peaks when excited at a 250 nm wavelength.

At last! The single-crystal X-ray structure of a naturally occurring sample of the ilmenite-type oxide FeCrO3.

A natural single crystal of the ferrimagnetic oxide FeCrO3, which was found in an opencast mine situated in the San Luis Potosí State in Mexico, has been characterized in order to elucidate some outstanding issues about the actual structure of this material. The single-crystal X-ray analysis unambiguously shows that transition metal cations are segregated in alternating layers normal to the threefold crystallographic axis, affording a structure isomorphous to that of ilmenite (FeTiO3), in the space group R3̅. The possible occurrence of cation antisite and vacancy defects is below the limit of detection available from X-ray data.