MR fluids often contain surfactants including, but not limited to:
* oleic acid
* tetramethylammonium hydroxide
* citric acid
* soy lecithin
These surfactants serve to decrease the rate of ferroparticle settling, of which a high rate is an unfavorable characteristic of MR fluids. The ideal MR fluid would never settle, but developing this ideal fluid is as highly improbable as developing a perpetual motion machine according to our current understanding of the laws of physics. Surfactant-aided prolonged settling is typically achieved in one of two ways: by addition of surfactants, and by addition of spherical ferromagnetic nanoparticles. Addition of the nanoparticles results in the larger particles staying suspended longer since the non-settling nanoparticles interfere with the settling of the larger micrometre-scale particles due to Brownian motion. Addition of a surfactant allows micelles to form around the ferroparticles. A surfactant has a polar head and non-polar tail (or vice versa), one of which adsorbs to a ferroparticle, while the non-polar tail (or polar head) sticks out into the carrier medium, forming an inverse or regular micelle, respectively, around the particle. This increases the effective particle diameter. Steric repulsion then prevents heavy agglomeration of the particles in their settled state, which makes fluid remixing (particle redispersion) occur far faster and with less effort. For example, magnetorheological dampers will remix within one cycle with a surfactant additive, but are nearly impossible to remix without them.
While surfactants are useful in prolonging the settling rate in MR fluids, they also prove detrimental to the fluid's magnetic properties (specifically, the magnetic saturation), which is commonly a parameter which users wish to maximize in order to increase the maximum apparent yield stress. Whether the anti-settling additive is nanosphere-based or surfactant-based, their addition decreases the packing density of the ferroparticles while in its activated state, thus decreasing the fluids on-state/activated viscosity, resulting in a "softer" activated fluid with a lower maximum apparent yield stress. While the on-state viscosity (the "hardness" of the activated fluid) is also a primary concern for many MR fluid applications, it is a primary fluid property for the majority of their commercial and industrial applications and therefore a compromise must be met when considering on-state viscosity, maximum apparent yields stress, and settling rate of an MR fluid.