Liquid crystalline phases and demixing in binary mixtures of shape-anisometric colloids

Abstract

A theoretical model of shape-anisometric particles embedded in a cubic lattice is formulated for binary mixtures combining rod-like, plate-like and spherical particles. The model aims at providing a tool for the prediction and interpretation of complex phase behavior in a variety of liquid crystalline colloids, biological and macromolecular systems. Introducing just repulsive interactions among the particles, a rich variety of phase structures and multiphasic equilibria is obtained, including isotropic, nematic, lamellar and columnar phases, demixing into phases of the same or different symmetries and structural microsegregation of the different species of the mixture within the same phase.

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Hard-body models of bulk liquid crystals
• Spontaneous ordering of magnetic particles in liquid crystals: From chains to biaxial lamellae
• Orientational ordering and phase behaviour of a binary mixture of hard spheres and hard spherocylinders
• Tracking three-phase coexistences in binary mixtures of hard plates and spheres
• Bulk fluid phase behaviour of colloidal platelet-sphere and platelet-polymer mixtures
• Sedimentation of colloidal plate-sphere mixtures and inference of particle characteristics from stacking sequences
• Second-virial theory for shape-persistent living polymers templated by discs