Yielding behavior and temperature-induced on-field oscillatory rheological studies in a novel MR suspension containing polymer-capped Fe3Ni alloy microspheres

Magnetic Bimetallic alloy nanoparticles of 3d elements are known for their tunable shape, size and magnetic anisotropy and find extensive applications ranging from magneto-mechanical to biomedical devices. This paper reports the polyol-mediated synthesis of Fe-rich polyacrylic acid (PAA)-Fe3Ni alloyed microspheres and its morphological and structural characterizations with scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction studies. Magnetorheological fluid was prepared by dispersing the 10 vol% microparticles in silicone oil. The room temperature viscoelastic characterization of the fluid was performed under different magnetic fields. The field-dependent yield stresses were scaled using Klingenberg model and found that static yield stress was more accurately described by an ~M3 dependence, where M is particle magnetization. We proposed a multipolar contribution and ascertained the fact that simple dipolar description was insufficient to describe the trend in a complex rheological fluid. Temperature-dependent oscillatory rheological studies under various fields were also investigated. This demonstrated a strong temperature-induced thinning effect. The temperature-thinning in complex moduli and viscosity were more pronounced for the samples at higher magnetic field owing to quasi-solid behavior.