Saturated orientational polarization of polar molecules in giant electrorheological fluids

Many researches on polar-molecular electrorheological (PMER) fluids with giant electrorheological effects were reported in recent years. The particles of PMER fluids (PMER particles) are known to have a dielectric core with high dielectric constant and a shell of polar molecules. Our calculation of local electric fields using the finite element approach shows that the local electric field can cause an orientational polarization of the polar molecules. The saturation of the orientational polarization occurs on the outer shells of two nearby PMER particles. Then, it causes the strong outer shell-outer shell interaction between the two particles, and this kind of interaction is just responsible for the giant electrorheological effect. It is further realized that the PMER effect is mainly due to the interaction of the tail-head connected polar molecules within the two outer shells between the two PMER particles. Our theoretical results of static yield stresses are shown to be in excellent agreement with the reported experimental data by several groups. For general PMER fluids, the calculated static yield stress is nearly proportional to R(x-1). When h/R, the ratio between the thickness of shells and radius of PMER particles, changes from 0.05 to 0.5, the index x changes accordingly from 0.64 to 0.51. It is also found that particles with thinner thickness h and smaller radius R have larger electrorheological effects until the static yield stress shows a peak when R reaches about 10 nm.