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Updated: Jul 13, 2026

Orientational Transition in a Liquid Crystal Triggered by the Thermodynamic Growth of Interfacial Wetting Sheets
Published on: May 15, 2017
Glassy orientational dynamics of rodlike molecules near the isotropic-nematic transition
Biman Jana1, Dwaipayan Chakrabarti, Biman Bagchi
1Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India.
Abstract:
We investigate the single-particle orientational dynamics of rodlike molecules across the isotropic-nematic transition in computer simulations of a family of model systems of thermotropic liquid crystals. Several remarkable features of glassy dynamics are on display including nonexponential relaxation, dynamical heterogeneity, and non-Arrhenius temperature dependence of the orientational relaxation time. In order to obtain a quantitative measure of glassy dynamics in line with the established methods in supercooled liquids, we construct a relaxation time versus scaled inverse temperature plot and demonstrate that one can indeed define a "fragility index" for thermotropic liquid crystals that depends on density and aspect ratio. The values of the fragility parameter are surprisingly in the range observed for glass-forming liquids. A plausible correlation between the energy landscape features and the observed fragility is discussed.
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