Advances in Materials Physics and Chemistry, 2015, 5, 344-349
Published Online August 2015 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/ampc
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ampc.2015.58034
How to cite this paper: Dai, M. and Pu, S.L. (2015) Synthesis and Faraday Effect of Fe-Al Oxide Composite Ferrofluid. Ad-
vances in Materials Physics and Chemistry, 5, 344-349. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ampc.2015.58034
Synthesis and Faraday Effect of Fe-Al Oxide
Composite Ferrofluid
Min Dai
1,2
, Shengli Pu
2
1
College of Mining, University of Guizhou for Project and Application Technology, Guizhou, China
2
College of Science, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China
Email: daiminshh@aliyun.com
Received 24 July 2015; accepted 24 August 2015; published 27 August 2015
Copyright © 2015 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Abstract
A kind of ferrofluid containing Fe-Al oxide composite nanometer particles was synthesized. The
ferrofluid made of Fe-Al oxide composite nanometer particles which ratio was Fe:Al
2
O
3
= 3:1 and
thermally treated at 300˚C showed Faraday effect approximate linearity versus the magnetic field
B, and a relatively excellent Faraday effect without saturation in varying 0 - 1.5T magnetic field,
which provided a method for synthesizing the ferrofluid of Faraday rotation still continuing in a
relatively high magnetic field.
Keywords
Faraday Effects, Ferrofluid, Fe-Al Oxide Composite Nanometer particles, Saturation
1. Introduction
Faraday effect is the rotation of polarization plane of the linearly polarized light due to magnetic field induced
circular birefringence of a material, which depends on the incident light wavelength and the structure of the ma-
terial. The rotation angle
θ = π(Δn/λ)L, where Δn is the index difference between the left and right circularly
polarized light, λ is the wavelength of the incident light and L is the length of the sample along magnetic field
direction. Faraday active materials are often used to fabricate many optical devices and sensors, such as optical
isolators [1], optical information storage devices [2], and highly sensitive magnetic field sensors [3] [4]. Mea-
surements of Faraday effect have also been used to determine the electron concentration and its profile in semi-
conductors where the effective mass of the carrier is known [5]. Researchers continue to discover and synthesize
new Faraday active materials to expect more extensive applications of Faraday effects in many areas. At present,
researchers have synthesized a lot of films, glasses and crystals with Faraday effects [6]-[9]. Synthesizing vari-
ous new nanometer materials with excellent Faraday effects is ongoing.