Session L36 - General Poster Session II.
POSTER session, Wednesday morning, March 22
Exhibit Hall, MCC
Effect of heterogeneous matrix density on segregation and orientation of short chain molecules (dimer, trimer, etc.), a model for polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC), is studied by a computer simulation. The hybrid computational method involves discrete lattice and off-lattice simulations to incorporate its strength in moving the system efficiently and capturing the details; this method is also used for long chain polymer systems. On increasing the matrix density (p_b), the size of molecular aggregates is found to increase leading to a polymerization-induced segregation and seems consistent with the recent experimental observations. Orientational ordering is found to depend on the molecular weight in which the ordering decreases monotonically with the matrix density for low molecular weight liquid. For higher molecular weight liquid, on the other hand, it depends non-monotonically on the molecular weight. Similar study is also carried out at different temperatures which play an important role in clustering of molecules and their orientational ordering. Some of these results will be presented.