A Mean Field Model for the Phase Diagram of a Discotic Liquid Crystalline System

Abstract

In an earlier work the present authors extended the variational method of Lee et al. for rod-like molecules to obtain the phase diagram of a discotic liquid crystal system. In the present work, the phase diagram of a discotic system is reproduced in a single particle potential model. It is seen that the single particle potential approach reproduces results very similar to those of the variational method but with considerable ease in computation. The equivalence of the two approaches is discussed.

Key Words:

• discotic phase
• single particle potential