Magnetorheological characteristics of carbon nanotube wrapped carbonyl iron particles

Carbonyl iron (CI) based magnetorheological (MR) fluid exhibits serious dispersion defect in general due to large density mismatch between CI particles and continuous medium, which restricts further MR application. Thus, various strategies were explored either to reduce the density or to prevent CI particle aggregation. Among them, polymer coating technology becomes more prevalent due to favorable morphology obtained and effective decrease in density by introducing polymeric shell; nevertheless, coating polymer on the surface of CI particles is always influenced by the selected grafting agent, mole ratio of reactant or the temperature of reaction. In this work, considering self-assembling trend of carbon nanotube (CNT) which exhibits similar density with polymer but better magnetic property due to the iron catalyst, we constructed a dense nest composed of CNT on the surface of CI particles by using 4-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) as a grafting agent under sonication. Thickness and morphology of the CNT nest were found to be related with sonication duration via SEM/TEM images. MR performances (yield stress behavior, shear viscosity) of the CI/CNT particles based MR fluid were investigated via controlled shear rate and controlled shear stress methods. Finally, sedimentation observation was checked to be improved.