Mesogens isotropic-nematic phase transition

One of the primary features of the Gay-Berne potential is the presence of anisotropic attractive forces which should allow the observation of thermally driven phase transitions and this has proved to be the case. Thus using the parametrisation proposed by Gay and Berne, Adams et al. [9] showed that GB(3.0, 5.0, 2, 1) exhibits both nematic and isotropic phases on varying the temperature at constant density. This was chosen to be close to the transitional density for hard ellipsoids with the same ellipticity indeed it is generally the case that to observe a nematic-isotropic transition for Gay-Berne mesogens the density should be set in this way. The long range orientational order of the phase was established from the non-zero values of the orientational correlation coefficient, G2(r), at large separations and the translational disorder was apparent from the radial distribution function. 

So far we have not considered the influence of the constitution of the polymer main chain on the formation of the nematic phase. If the same mesogenic group is linked to different backbones, the nematic phase can be preserved, as shown for one example in Table 3. Owing to the different flexibilities of the backbones, the nematic state is shifted with respect to the temperature. With falling flexibility of the main chain, as indicated by the increasing glass transition temperature, the phase transformation temperatures nematic to isotropic are shifted towards higher temperatures. This clearly indicates that the restriction of motions, due to the polymer-fixation, directly reflects on the phase transformation temperature. If this restriction... 

We will discuss some preliminary results, which have been performed recently l01). In Fig. 39a the results for polymer No. 2d of Table 10 are shown, which were obtained by torsional vibration experiments. At low temperatures the step in the G (T) curve and the maximum in the G"(T) curve indicate a p-relaxation process at about 120-130 K. Accordingly the glass transition is detected at about 260 K. At 277 K the nematic elastomer becomes isotropic. This phase transformation can be seen only by a very small step in G and G" in the tail of glass transition region, which is shown in more detail in Fig. 39 b. From these measurements we can conclude, that the visco-elastic properties are largely dominated by the properties of the polymer backbone the change of the mesogenic side chains from isotropic to liquid crystalline acts only as a small disturbance and in principle the visco-elastic behavior of the elastomer... 

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