Two-stage kinetics of field-induced aggregation of medium-sized magnetic nanoparticles

Abstract

The present paper is focused on the theoretical and experimental study of the kinetics of field-induced aggregation of magnetic nanoparticles of a size range of 20-100 nm. Our results demonstrate that (a) in polydisperse suspensions, the largest particles could play a role of the centers of nucleation for smaller particles during the earliest heterogeneous nucleation stage; (b) an intermediate stage of the aggregate growth (due to diffusion and migration of individual nanoparticles towards the aggregates) is weakly influenced by the magnetic field strength, at least at high supersaturation; (c) the stage of direct coalescence of drop-like aggregates (occurring under magnetic attraction between them) plays a dominant role at the intermediate and late stages of the phase separation, with the time scale decreasing as a square of the aggregate magnetization.