2006/02/02 by Kostya Shundyak, K. Shundyak, René van Roij +3 · 11 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Materials and Mechanics #Biaxial nematic #Composite material #Compressibility #Condensed matter physics #Critical point (mathematics) #Elasticity (physics) #Geometry #Isotropy #Liquid Crystal Research Advancements #Liquid crystal #Material Dynamics and Properties #Materials science #Mathematics #Optics #Phase (matter) #Phase diagram #Phase transition #Physics #Polymer #Rod #Thermodynamics #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.74.021710
published in Physical Review E 74(2), 021710 (American Physical Society) · 8 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2006/02/02 · openalex publication_date 2006/08/24 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We theoretically study the nematic ordering transition of rods that are able to elastically adjust their mutually excluded volumes. The model rods, which consist of a hard core surrounded by a deformable shell, mimic the structure of polymer-coated, rodlike fd virus particles that have recently been the object of experimental study [K. Purdy, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 057801 (2005)]. We find that fluids of such soft rods exhibit an isotropic-nematic phase transition at a density higher than that of the corresponding hard-rod system of identical diameter, and that at coexistence the order parameter of the nematic phase depends nonmonotonically on the elastic properties of the polymer coating. For binary mixtures of hard and soft rods, the topology of the phase diagram turns out to depend sensitively on the elasticity of a shell. The lower nematic-nematic critical point, discovered in mixtures of bare and polymer-coated fd virus particles, is not reproduced by the theory.