The Specification of Steric Effects in The Flory Approach to Nematic Fluids

Abstract

A minor refinement of the steric influences in Flory's Statistical Mechanics of liquid crystals is presented. The results of Flory and Ronca and of Warner and Flory are recalculated, that is, the critical axial ratio of rods in the athermal limit, and, for thermotropic rods, the entropy and order at the transition, the transition temperature as a function of axial ratio and finally the phase equilibrium for mixtures of model nematogens. Comparison with experiments on such model systems shows that some improvement is obtained.