High performance magnetorheological elastomers strengthened by perpendicularly interacted flax fiber and carbonyl iron chains

This work reported a novel high performance flax fiber (FF) strengthened magnetorheological elastomer (FF-MRE), whose mechanical property was improved by the unique three-dimension (3D) topologic strengthening structure composed of flax fiber and perpendicular carbonyl iron particles (CIPs) chains. Both the tensile and shear properties of this polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) based FF-MRE were obviously influenced by the content of CIPs and flax fiber layers. In comparison to the anisotropic pure MRE, the tensile strength of FF-MRE with two layers of flax fiber increased as high as 87%. Importantly, when the content of the CIPs was kept at 70 wt%, the magnetorheological (MR) effect reached 184%. It was found that the CIPs chains were vertical to the flax fiber and the crosslink 3D topologic structure strengthened the PDMS matrix. Under the external magnetic field, the relative MR effect increased with increasing of the magnetic dipole-dipole interaction. Due to the enhanced stretch-ability, a flexible and magneto-controllable gripper was developed based on the flax fiber strengthened MRE, which demonstrated a delicate activity on actuation. This material is expected to have broad potential in active control and intelligent actuator. (paper)