Mixtures of Hard Ellipsoids and Spheres: Stability of the Nematic Phase

TL;DR

This paper investigates how small amounts of non-mesogenic impurities, modeled as hard spheres, affect the stability of the nematic phase in mixtures with hard ellipsoids using Monte Carlo simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a simple model and method to analyze the stability of the nematic phase in mixtures of hard ellipsoids and spheres, extending known phase diagrams.

Findings

Impurities influence the stability of the nematic phase.

Monte Carlo simulations reveal the conditions for phase stability.

The model provides insights into liquid crystal mixture behavior.

Abstract

The stability of liquid crystal phases in presence of small amount of non-mesogenic impurities is of general interest for a large spectrum of technological applications and in the theories of binary mixtures. Starting from the known phase diagram of the hard ellipsoids systems, we propose a simple model and method to explore the stability of the nematic phase in presence of small impurities represented by hard spheres. The study is performed in the isobaric ensemble with Monte Carlo simulations.