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Updated: Aug 12, 2026

Orientational Transition in a Liquid Crystal Triggered by the Thermodynamic Growth of Interfacial Wetting Sheets
Published on: May 15, 2017
Interfacial tension of the isotropic-nematic interface in suspensions of soft spherocylinders
1Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, D-55099 Mainz, Staudinger Weg 7, Germany.
Abstract:
The isotropic to nematic transition in a system of soft spherocylinders is studied by means of grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations. The probability distribution of the particle density is used to determine the coexistence densities of the isotropic and the nematic phases. The distributions are also used to compute the interfacial tension of the isotropic-nematic interface, including an analysis of finite size effects. Our results confirm that the Onsager limit is not recovered until for very large elongation, exceeding at least L/D=40 , with L the spherocylinder length and D the diameter. For smaller elongation, we find that the interfacial tension increases with increasing L/D , in agreement with theoretical predictions.
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