Dipolar ordering of clay particles in various carrier fluids

Abstract

We investigate here examples of complexity in composite materials. The objective of the paper is to show that clay particles can be aligned in different hosting media, such as: silicone oil, paraffin-wax, polystyrene and ambient air. The use of an electric field is an easily controllable, non-intrusive manner of inducing such an alignment. Depending on the medium used, a large span in time constants for the orientation and reorganization has been observed. Furthermore, the reorientation may be frozen into the material, thus permanently changing its properties.