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Polar-molecules-driven enhanced colloidal electrostatic interactions and their applications in achieving high active electrorheological materials

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Abstract

We have fabricated a class of colloidal electrorheological (ER) fluids, in which suspended TiO2 particles were synthesized by a sol-gel method and modified by 1,4-butyrolactone molecules with a permanent molecular dipole moment of 4.524 D. Compared with pure TiO2 ER fluids, the quasi-static yield stress of the polar- molecules-modified ER fluid is enhanced as high as 48.1 kPa when subjected to an external electric field of 5 kV/mm. Also, it possesses other attractive characters such as low current density (<14 μA/cm2) and low sedimentation. Based on a Green’s function method, we present a first-principles approach to investigate colloidal electrostatic interactions. Excellent agreement between experiment and theory has been shown for the enhancement ratio of quasi-static yield stress, which quantitatively reveals that enough polar molecules oriented within the field-directed gap between the colloidal particles can unexpectedly enhance the interactions, thus yielding the unusual enhancement. This shows a promising and flexible direction for achieving more highly active ER materials.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Prof. K.Q. Lu, Ms. R. Shen, Prof. F. Lu, and Mr. C.X. Wang for fruitful discussion and help. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 10574027 and 10604014, and by the Science Creative Foundation (B2-13-08) of Fudan University. W.J. Tian and J.P. Huang also acknowledge financial support by the Shanghai Education Committee and the Shanghai Education Development Foundation (the “Shu Guang” project), by the Pujiang Talent Project (No. 06PJ14006) of the Shanghai Science and Technology Committee, and by the Chinese National Key Basic Research Special Fund under Grant No. 2006CB921706.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Surface Physics Laboratory and Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, People’s Republic of China

    L. Xu, W.J. Tian, X.F. Wu, J.G. Cao, L.W. Zhou & J.P. Huang

  2. School of Information Science and Technology, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, People’s Republic of China

    G.Q. Gu

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  1. L. Xu
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  2. W.J. Tian
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  3. X.F. Wu
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  4. J.G. Cao
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  7. G.Q. Gu
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Correspondence to J.P. Huang.

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Xu, L., Tian, W., Wu, X. et al. Polar-molecules-driven enhanced colloidal electrostatic interactions and their applications in achieving high active electrorheological materials. Journal of Materials Research 23, 409–417 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1557/JMR.2008.0057

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/JMR.2008.0057

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