Nematic liquid crystals of bifunctional patchy spheres

摘要: Anisotropic interactions can bring about the formation, through self-assembly, of semi-flexible chains, which in turn give rise to nematic phases for suitable temperatures and concentrations. A minimalist model constituted hard cylinders decorated with attractive sites has been already extensively studied numerically. Simulation data shows that a theoretical approach recently proposed is able properly capture physical properties these self-assembly-driven liquid crystals. Here, we investigated simpler bifunctional Kern-Frenkel spheres does not possess steric anisotropy but undergo istropic-nematic transition as result their self-assembly into chains. For this compare an accurate numerical estimate isotropic-nematic phase boundaries predictions. The treatment, originally cylinder-like particles, greatly simplified its predictions are good agreement results. Finally, also assess crucial, obvious, hypothesis used theory, i.e. ability Onsager trial function particle orientation presence aggregation, checked yet.