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Updated: Aug 21, 2026

Preparation of Liquid Crystal Networks for Macroscopic Oscillatory Motion Induced by Light
Published on: September 20, 2017
A computer simulation study of the influence of a liquid crystal medium on polymerization
Roberto Berardi1, Davide Micheletti, Luca Muccioli
1Dipartimento di Chimica Fisica e Inorganica, and INSTM, Università di Bologna, Viale Risorgimento 4, 40136 Bologna, Italy.
Abstract:
We present a simple molecular level model based on Gay-Berne monomers linked by finitely extendable nonlinear elastic potential bonds for describing main chain polymerization in liquid crystals. We apply the model to study the influence that the order of the medium has on the characteristics of the chains obtained. We find that the chains prepared from the nematic are actually straighter than those obtained from a polymerization in the isotropic phase and that they are characterized by a small number of hairpins as experimentally observed.
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