Related papers: Density--nematic coupling in isotropic linear poly…
We present and analyze correlation functions of a main-chain polymer nematic in a continuum worm-like chain description for two types of constraints formalized by the tensorial and vectorial conservation laws, both originating in the…
A Self Consistent Field Theory description of equilibrium, but non uniform, configurations adopted by semi flexible liquid crystal molecules is presented. Two cases are considered, isotropic-nematic phase boundaries, and topological defects…
The nematic ordering in semiflexible polymers with contour length $L$ exceeding their persistence length $\ell_p$ is described by a confinement of the polymers in a cylinder of radius $r_{eff}$ much larger than the radius $r_\rho$, expected…
Polymers are a primary building block in many biomaterials, often interacting with anisotropic backgrounds. While previous studies have considered polymer dynamics within nematic solvents, rarely are the the effects of anisotropic viscosity…
Isotropic-genesis nematic elastomers (IGNEs) are liquid crystalline polymers (LCPs) that have been randomly, permanently cross-linked in the high-temperature state so as to form an equilibrium random solid. Thus, instead of being free to…
We explore the implications of the conservation law(s) and the corresponding "continuity equation(s)", resulting from the coupling between the positional and the orientational order in main-chain polymer nematics, by showing that the…
We apply a recently proposed density functional for mixtures of parallel hard cylinders, based on Rosenfeld's fundamental measure theory, to study the effect of length-polydispersity on the relative stability between the smectic and…
We theoretically study the nematic ordering transition of rods that are able to elastically adjust their mutually excluded volumes. The model rods, which consist of a hard core surrounded by a deformable shell, mimic the structure of…
Despite their considerable practical and biological applications, the link between molecular properties, assembly conditions and self-organized structure in confined polymer solutions remains elusive. Here, we explore the lyotropic nematic…
We investigate the tight packing of nematic polymers inside a confining hard sphere. We model the polymer {\sl via} the continuum Frank elastic free energy augmented by a simple density dependent part as well as by taking proper care of the…
A self-interacting polymer can undergo an orientational ordering transition, depending on the magnitude of the nematic interaction. The effect of embedding such a polymer into a flexible surface on this transition is studied on the…
Conformations of a single semiflexible polymer chain dissolved in a low molecular weight liquid crystalline solvents (nematogens) are examined by using a mean field theory. We takes into account a stiffness and partial orientational…
A novel approach to the dynamics of dilute solutions of polymer molecules under flow conditions is proposed by applying the rules of mesoscopic nonequilibrium thermodynamics (MNET). The probability density describing the state of the system…
The transport coefficients of dense polymeric fluids are approximately calculated from the microscopic intermolecular forces. The following finite molecular weight effects are discussed within the Polymer-Mode-Coupling theory (PMC) and…
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit configurations in which the underlying ordering changes markedly on macroscopic length scales. Such structures include topological defects in the nematic phase and tactoids within nematic-isotropic…
We derive the "conservation law" for nematic polymers in tensorial form valid for quadrupolar orientational order in contradistinction to the conservation law in the case of polar orientational order. Due to microscopic differences in the…
We address the physics of nematic liquid crystalline elastomers randomly crosslinked in the isotropic state. To do this, we construct a phenomenological effective replica Hamiltonian in terms of two order-parameter fields: one for the…
We propose and analyze a mathematical model of the mechanics of gels, consisting of the laws of balance of mass and linear momentum. We consider a gel to be an immiscible and incompressible mixture of a nonlinearly elastic polymer and a…
We show by means of continuum theory and simulations that geometric percolation in uniaxial nematics of hard slender particles is fundamentally different from that in isotropic dispersions. In the nematic, percolation depends only very…
We consider the impact of the elastomer network on the structure and fluctuations in the isotropic-genesis nematic elastomer, via a phenomenological model that underscores the role of network compliance. The model contains a…