Agglomerate formation in moderately concentrated ferrofluids from static magneto-optical measurements

In this paper the stability of ferrofluids based on several organic solvents with magnetite particles having different stabilization layers from static linear dichroism and birefringence has been studied. Based on the theory of formation it has been found that the mean number of particles per chain for most samples is very low; the mean ellipticity of chains computed from the formation theory turns out to be that of individual particles. A good agreement with the results of image processing of an electron micrography was found. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.