Entropy, thermotropic liquid crystals

The mechanisms by which liquid crystals influence reaction rates need further study. Presumably, one important factor is the effect of ordering on entropy changes of various steps of the reaction. Bacon (44) has considered this factor in connection with the ability of thermotropic liquid crystals to increase the polymerization rate of phenylacetylene. 

The energy scale of an elastic distortion around a particle is of order KR, where iC is a typical elastic constant of the nematic liquid crystal [19] and R is the radius of the particle. For a thermotropic liquid crystal, K is approximately 10 N, and for a colloidal particle, i is approximately one micron thus the energy scale is a few thousands k TyWhere is the Boltzmann constant and T the temperature. As a result, the entropy of the particles is negligible compared to the elastic interactions. Under these conditions, the structures formed due to attractive interactions remain stable against thermal fluctuations. 

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