Faculty of Physics - University of Bucharest

UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
FACULTY OF PHYSICS

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2024-11-22 1:57

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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2006 Meeting

Section: Polymer Physics

Title:

Influence of a random field on phase separation in liquid crystal colloids

Authors:

Vlad Popa-Nita (1), P. van der Schoot(2), Samo Kralj(3)

Affiliation:

(1)Faculty of Physics,University of Bucharest, Romania

(2)Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands

3Faculty of Education,University of Maribor, Slovenia

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Keywords:

nematogen-colloid mixture,liquid crystal

Abstract:

The influence of a random anisotropy type disorder on the phase separation of nematogen-colloid mixture is sudied, invoking a combination of the Phenomenological Landau-de Gennes, Carnahan-Starling,and hard-sphere crystal theories. We assume that the colloids enforce the random anisotropy disorder on the surrounding thermotropic liquid crystal molecules. We adopt the Imry-Ma argument according to which the lower-temperature phase exhibits a domain-like pattern. With increasing disorder the difference between isotropic and nematic ordering decreases. Consequently there is a critical disorder, above which both phases become identical from the orientation point of view, but have different concentrations of colloids.