SYNTHESIS AND VISCOELASTIC BEHAVIORS OF POLY(ANILINE-CO-O-ETHOXYANILINE) PARTICLES SUSPENDED ELECTRORHEOLOGICAL FLUID

Abstract

Copolyanilines are synthesized by a chemical oxidation of aniline and o-ethoxyaniline with various molar ratios in an acidic media, and then characteristics of these polymers such as chemical structure, particle size and the particle size distribution were examined by using FT-IR, SEM and particle size analyzer, respectively. Suspensions of copolyaniline containing ethoxy group, namely poly(aniline-co-o-ethoxyaniline), in silicone oil have been investigated as one of many potential candidates for dry-base electrorheological (ER) fluid systems. Rotational rheometer (Physica) equipped with a high voltage generator was used to characterize the rheological properties of ER fluids from both steady shear and dynamic tests. From the steady shear experiment, we obtained flow properties and found that ER fluids exhibited the yield phenomenon. On the other hand, viscoelastic property was also obtained from the dynamic experiment. Since viscoelastic properties for ER fluids are mainly dominated by the particle chain structure, the state at different time scale was analyzed from the rheological parameters such as storage modulus (G'), loss modulus (G'') and tan δ. We conducted a strain amplitude sweep at 1 Hz under an applied electric field to determine a linear viscoelastic region first. The G' and G'' were then measured by a frequency sweep from 0.1 to 100 Hz in the linear viscoelastic region.