Empirical Law for the Magnetorheological Effect of Nanocomposite Hydrogels with Magnetite Microparticles

Hydrogels are functional smart materials which can be tailored by modifying their chemical composition. Further functionalization can be achieved by incorporating magnetic particles into the gel matrix. In this study, a hydrogel with magnetite micro-particles is synthesized and characterized by rheological measurements. Inorganic clay is used as the crosslinking agent, which additionally prevents the sedimentation of the micro-particles during the synthesis of the gel. The mass fractions for the magnetite particles in the synthesized gels range from 10% to 60% in the initial state. Rheological measurements are performed in different degrees of swelling using temperature as a stimulus. The influence of a homogeneous magnetic field is analyzed by a step-wise activation and deactivation during dynamic mechanical analysis. For the evaluation of the magnetorheological effect in the steady states a procedure is developed, which takes occurring drift effects into account. Using the magnetic flux density, the particle volume fraction and the storage modulus as independent parameters, a general product approach is deployed for a regression analysis of the dataset. In the end, an empirical law for the magnetorheological effect in nanocomposite hydrogels can be found.