Nematic-smectic transition of parallel hard spheroellipsoids
- Author(s)
- Franz J. Vesely
- Abstract
Spheroellipsoids are truncated ellipsoids with spherical end caps. If
gradients are assumed to change smoothly at the junction of body and
cap, the truncation height z 0 determines the geometry uniquely. The resulting model particle has only two shape parameters, namely, the aspect ratio c/a of the basic ellipsoid and the cutoff z 0/a.
These two parameters can be tuned to yield a continuous transformation
between a pure ellipsoid and a spherocylinder. Since parallel hard
spherocylinders display a nematic-smectic A phase transition, while ellipsoids do not, the influence of the particle shape on the possibility of a smectic phase may be investigated. A density functional analysis is used to detect the dividing line, in the (c/a, z 0/a)
plane, between the presence and absence of the N-S transition. Since
spheroellipsoids may be useful as generic model particles for anisotropic molecules, we provide a computationally efficient overlap criterion for a pair in a general, non-parallel configuration.
- Organisation(s)
- Computational and Soft Matter Physics
- Journal
- Journal of Chemical Physics
- Volume
- 141
- No. of pages
- 6
- ISSN
- 0021-9606
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4892378
- Publication date
- 08-2014
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103006 Chemical physics, 103029 Statistical physics
- Keywords
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/6bf21c8d-0165-4e25-b283-9df5a74acdea