Dresden 2011 – scientific programme

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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 17: Liquid Crystals

CPP 17.4: Talk

Tuesday, March 15, 2011, 15:00–15:15, ZEU 114

Entropy-driven enhanced self-diffusion in confined reentrant supernematics — •Marco Mazza — Stranski-Laboratorium für Physikalische und Theoretische Chemie, Technische Universität Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany

We present a molecular dynamics study of reentrant nematic phases using the Gay-Berne-Kihara model of a liquid crystal in nanoconfinement. At densities above those characteristic of smectic A phases, reentrant nematic phases form that are characterized by a large value of the nematic order parameter S≃1. Along the nematic director these “supernematic” phases exhibit a remarkably high self-diffusivity which exceeds that for ordinary, lower-density nematic phases by an order of magnitude. Enhancement of self-diffusivity is attributed to a decrease of rotational configurational entropy in confinement. Recent developments in the pulsed field gradient NMR technique are shown to provide favorable conditions for an experimental confirmation of our simulations.

Ref.: M.G. Mazza, M. Greschek, R. Valiullin, J. Kaerger, M. Schoen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 227802 (2010).