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The giant electrorheological effect in suspensions of nanoparticles

Nature Materials volume 2, pages 727–730 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

Electrorheology (ER) denotes the control of a material's flow properties (rheology) through an electric field1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. We have fabricated electrorheological suspensions of coated nanoparticles that show electrically controllable liquid–solid transitions. The solid state can reach a yield strength of 130 kPa, breaking the theoretical upper bound on conventional ER static yield stress that is derived on the general assumption that the dielectric and conductive responses of the component materials are linear. In this giant electrorheological (GER) effect, the static yield stress displays near-linear dependence on the electric field, in contrast to the quadratic variation usually observed11,12,13,14,15,16. Our GER suspensions show low current density over a wide temperature range of 10–120 °C, with a reversible response time of <10 ms. Finite-element simulations, based on the model of saturation surface polarization in the contact regions of neighbouring particles, yield predictions in excellent agreement with experiment.

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Figure 1: Images of nanoparticles in GER suspensions.
Figure 2: Static yield stress plotted as a function of applied electric field for two solid concentrations.
Figure 3: Ilustration of the theoretical model with calculated results.

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Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by CERG HKUST6065/02P and NSFC No.10029401. We thank Y. Zheng for help in TEM pictures. W.W. and P.S. also thank C. T. Chan and W. K. Ge for support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Institute of Nano Science and Technology, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

    Weijia Wen, Xianxiang Huang & Ping Sheng

  2. Department of Chemistry and Institute of Nano Science and Technology, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

    Shihe Yang

  3. Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100080, China

    Kunquan Lu

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Correspondence to Ping Sheng.

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Wen, W., Huang, X., Yang, S. et al. The giant electrorheological effect in suspensions of nanoparticles. Nature Mater 2, 727–730 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat993

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