An efficient and rapid procedure is developed for room-temperature ring opening of various epoxides with thiols under solvent-free conditions in the presence of catalytic amount of superparamagnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles. As a result, high conversion of reactants to various beta-hydroxy sulfides is observed in short time periods while the heterogeneous catalyst could be recovered and reused over several cycles without loosing its activity. Competitive reactions show higher reactivity of aromatic thiols over the aliphatic counterparts. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.