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Coupling between splay deformations and density modulations in splay-bend phases of bent colloidal rods
Carmine Anzivino1, René van Roij2, Marjolein Dijkstra1
1Soft Condensed Matter, Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science, Utrecht University, Princetonplein 1, 3584 CC Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Abstract:
Using a grand-canonical Landau-de Gennes theory for colloidal suspensions of bent (banana-shaped) rods, we investigate how spatial deformations in the nematic director field affect the local density of twist-bend and splay-bend nematic phases. The grand-canonical character of the theory naturally relates the local density to the local nematic order parameter S. In the splay-bend phase, we find S and hence the local density to modulate periodically along one spatial direction. As a consequence the splay-bend phase has the key symmetries of a smectic rather than a nematic phase. By contrast we find that S and hence the local density do not vary in space in the twist-bend phase, which is therefore a proper nematic phase. The theoretically predicted one-dimensional density modulations in splay-bend phases are in agreement with recent simulations.
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