Polydispersity in Magnetic Platelets

How important is polydispersity for the properties of magnetic nanoplatelet suspensions?

Polydisperse magnetic platelets, with the color going from red (small diameter) to blue (large diameter). The saturation of the color indicates the distance from the median- light platelets are close to the median, darker ones are significantly smaller or larger. The left image features random orientations, while the platelets on the left are (partially) aligned with an external magnetic field.

Magnetic nanoplatelets combine the fields of Liquid Crystals and Magnetic Soft Matter by having an out of plane magnetic moment, combined with their mesogenic shape. However, in keeping with their magnetic origins, synthesis methods will produce a lognormal distribution of platelet diameters (and magnetic moments), which causes deviations from the simpler case of same-size platelets. We investigated this, and linked to experimental results, in our first Vienna-Ljubljana joint paper, which was published here.