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Novel Techniques for Observing Structural Dynamics of Photoresponsive Liquid Crystals
Published on: May 29, 2018
A dissipative particle dynamics description of liquid-crystalline phases. I. Methodology and applications
Yehudi K Levine1, Alexandre E Gomes, Assis Farinha Martins
1Computational Biophysics, Debye Institute, Ornstein Laboratory, P.O. Box 80.000, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands. y.k.levin@phys.uu.nl
Abstract:
Simulations of nematic and smectic mesophases based on a dissipative particle dynamics approach are discussed. Mesogenic units are built in the form of standard semirigid bead-spring chains. It is shown that nematic phases can be formed for chains containing at least eight beads, provided that the conservative soft-repulsive potential between nonconnected beads is sufficiently strong. Smectic phases are observed only by modifying the repulsive interaction between the main-chain and terminal beads. The simulations indicate that the smectic-nematic and smectic-isotropic phase transitions take place through the buckling of the smectic layering in the system.
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