Ferrofluids times

Ferrimagnetic nanoparticles of magnetite (Fc304) in diamagnetic matrices have been studied. Nanoparticles have been obtained by alkaline precipitation of the mixture of Fe(II) and F(III) salts in a water medium [10]. Concentration of nanoparticles was 50 mg/ml (1 vol.%). The particles were stabilized by phosphate-citrate buffer (pH = 4.0) (method of electrostatic stabilization). Nanoparticle sizes have been determined by photon correlation spectrometry. Measurements were carried out at real time correlator (Photocor-SP). The viscosity of ferrofluids was 1.01 cP, and average diffusion coefficient of nanoparticles was 2.5 10 cm /s. The size distribution of nanoparticles was found to be log-normal with mean diameter of nanoparticles 17 nm and standard deviation 11 nm. 

To give the reader a flavor of the kinds of phenomena that can be predicted, we consider the simple case of a pool of ferrofluid, a portion of which is subjected to a weak magnetic field, at static equilibrium (see Fig. 8-14a). Thus, we drop the time derivative and the flow terms from Eq. (8-33), yielding... 

Ferrofluids have recently been combined with other complex fluids to produce fluids with very interesting behavior. When ionic ferrofluids are doped into nematic liquid crystals (Brochard and de Gennes 1970), the resulting nematic liquid orients under a magnetic field 10 times lower than that required in the absenceof the dopant (Chen and Amer 1983 Bacri... 

We have mentioned that the question posed above was answered in part by Shliomis and Stepanov [9]. They showed that for uniaxial particles, for weak applied magnetic fields, and in the noninertial limit, the equations of motion of the ferrofluid particle incorporating both the internal and the Brownian relaxation processes decouple from each other. Thus the reciprocal of the greatest relaxation time is the sum of the reciprocals of the Neel and Brownian relaxation times of both processes considered independently that is, those of a frozen Neel and a frozen Brownian mechanism In this instance the joint probability of the orientations of the magnetic moment and the particle in the fluid (i.e., the crystallographic axes) is the product of the individual probability distributions of the orientations of the axes and the particle so that the underlying Fokker Planck equation for the joint probability distribution also... 

Here the ratio Xri/xb represents the coupling between the magnetic and mechanical motions arising from the nonseparable namre of the Langevin equations, Lqs. (121) and (122). Thus the correction to the solid-state result imposed by the fluid is once again of the order 10 Hence we may conclude, despite the iionseparability of the equations of motion, that the Neel relaxation time of the ferrofluid particle should still be accurately represented in the IHD and VLD limits by the solid-state relaxation time formulae, Eqs. (87) and (90). Furthermore, Eq. (122) should be closely approximated by the solid-state relaxation equation... 

In Section V we are concerned with Gilbert s equation as applied to the Debye relaxation of a ferrofluid particle with the inertia of the particle included. It is shown, by averaging Gilbert s equation for Debye relaxation corrected for inertia and proceeding to the noninertial limit, how analytic expressions for the transverse and longitudinal relaxation times for Debye relaxation may be obtained directly from that equation thus bypassing the Fokker-Planck equation entirely. These expressions coincide with the previous results of the group of Shliomis [16]. 

In this section we summarize the approach used by previous authors [8, 16-19] to find expressions for the relaxation times of single domain ferromagnetic and ferrofluid particles. We begin with the Fokker-Planck equation obtained from Gilbert s equation, in spherical polar coordinates, augmented by a random field term, that is, with Brown s equation. We then expand the probability density of orientations of M, that is. 

The total magnetic field H - acting on the ferrofluid particle (the Neel mechanism being been blocked) is made up of a large constant field term H representing the DC bias field, a small time-dependent external field H(t) and a random field term h(r) so that... 

The magnetization decay of a ferrofluid which is under the influence of a constant field Hq, a small constant external field H such that i (M-H)/ kT having been switched off at time r = 0 is, from linear response theory (Appendix C)... 

It is of interest to compare these results with those for the field dependencies of the relaxation times and for T for the longitudinal and for the transverse polarization components of a polar fluid in a constant electric field Eq. As shown in [52, 55] the relaxation times and T are also given by Eqs. (5.55) and (5.56), where = nEJkT, p. is the dipole moment of a polar molecule and is the Debye rotational diffusion time with = 0. Thus, Eqs. (5.55) and (5.56) predict the same field dependencies of the relaxation times Tj and T for both a ferrofluid and a polar fluid. This is not unexpected because from a physical point of view the behavior of a suspension of fine ferromagnetic particles in a constant magnetic field Hg is similar to that of a system of electric dipoles (polar molecules) in a constant electric field Eg. 

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