Effects of molecular elongation on liquid crystalline phase behaviour: isotropic–nematic transition

✍ Scribed by Ram Chandra Singh; Jokhan Ram

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 158 KB
• Volume: 326
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0378-4371
• DOI: 10.1016/s0378-4371(03)00283-8

✦ Synopsis

We present the density-functional approach to study the isotropic-nematic transitions and calculate the values of freezing parameters of the Gay-Berne liquid crystal model, concentrating on the e ects of varying the molecular elongation, x0. For this, we have solved the Percus-Yevick integral equation theory to calculate the pair-correlation functions of a uid the molecules of which interact via a Gay-Berne pair potential. These results have been used in the density-functional theory as an input to locate the isotropic-nematic transition and calculate freezing parameters for a range of length-to-width parameters 3:0 6 x0 6 4:0 at reduced temperatures 0.95 and 1.25. We observed that as x0 is increased, the isotropic-nematic transition is seen to move to lower density at a given temperature. We ÿnd that the density-functional theory is good to study the freezing transitions in such uids. We have also compared our results with computer simulation results wherever they are available.