Condensed Matter Physics Commons^™

Ferromagnetic Liquid Droplets With Adjustable Magnetic Properties, Xuefei Wu, Robert Streubel, Xubo Liu, Paul Y. Kim, Yu Chai, Qin Hu, Dong Wang, Peter Fischer, Thomas P. Russell

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Faculty Publications

The assembly and jamming of magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) at liquid–liquid interfaces is a versatile platform to endow structured liquid droplets with a magnetization, i.e., producing ferromagnetic liquid droplets (FMLDs). Here, we use hydrodynamics experiments to probe how the magnetization of FMLDs and their response to external stimuli can be tuned by chemical, structural, and magnetic means. The remanent magnetization stems from magnetic NPs jammed at the liquid–liquid interface and dispersed NPs magneto-statically coupled to the interface. FMLDs form even at low concentrations of magnetic NPs when mixing nonmagnetic and magnetic NPs, since the underlying magnetic dipole-driven clustering of magnetic NP-surfactants …