Nematic phase characterisation of the self-assembling sphere-cylinders based on the theoretically calculated RDFs

Area of Science:

• Soft matter physics
• Materials science
• Theoretical chemistry

Background:

• Nematic liquid crystals exhibit complex self-assembled structures.
• Understanding spatial correlations is crucial for predicting material properties.
• Sphere-cylinder models are used to study self-assembly.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a theoretical framework for calculating pair distribution functions (RDFs) in nematic liquid crystals.
• To investigate the influence of nematic order on spatial correlations.
• To analyze the impact of crystal imperfections on pair distributions.

Main Methods:

• Theoretical modeling of sphere-cylinder self-assembly into linear chains.
• Separation of spatial correlations into parallel and perpendicular components relative to the crystalline axis.
• Application of a superposition model combining chain and Onsager distributions for parallel RDFs.
• Modeling perpendicular RDFs using soft disk distributions.

Main Results:

• Developed a framework to calculate pair distribution functions in nematic liquid crystals.
• Demonstrated that parallel RDFs can be described by a superposition of chain and Onsager models.
• Showed that perpendicular RDFs resemble those of soft disks.
• Quantified the influence of the nematic order parameter on spatial correlations.

Conclusions:

• The theoretical framework provides insights into spatial correlations in nematic liquid crystals.
• Crystal imperfections significantly affect pair distributions, even in highly ordered systems.
• The study highlights the interplay between nematic ordering and structural details.