Phase equilibria of confined liquid crystals

Abstract

The differences between the phase diagram of the Gay-Berne potential confined by two identical walls versus the corresponding bulk phase diagram have been investigated. A wall-fluid interaction 9-3 Lennard-Jones potential was used. The study was performed in most cases by using the hybrid Monte Carlo method for the μVT ensemble. Several isotherms were analysed where vapour, liquid and smectic phases were observed. The smectic-isotropic coexistence region becomes wider, i.e. the isotropic coexistence line is shifted to lower densities but the smectic coexistence line remains nearly the same. The triple point temperature of the confined system is estimated to be in the vicinity of 0.45 versus 0.40 of the bulk system. For the isotherm at T∗ = 0.65 an orientational dependence was added to the 9-3 Lennard-Jones potential to model the wall-fluid interaction. For both kinds of walls, 9-3 LJ with and without orientational dependence, confinement was not found to stabilize a nematic phase as found by previous authors.