Kinetics of Phase Separation in Liquid-Crystal/Polymer Mixtures
Studies on the effect of orientational ordering for mixtures of nematic liquid crystals and flexible polymers as they phase separate via spinodal decomposition.
Phase diagrams for the system we are modelling.
Here is a list of quenches we are currently running.
Take a look at the snapshots from these runs!
And here are the results depicting the behavior of early time phase separation and phase ordering.
View profiles on the resulting domain morphologies to show the effect of orientational ordering on our mixture of liquid crystals and polymers.
We also analyze the kinetics of domain growth for such a mixture.
Tube Breakup Dynamics (Rayleigh instability) of Immiscible Liquid Crystalline Polymer/Flexible Polymer Mixtures
"Beads on a String" Experiments show that as the tube breaks up, at the later stages the LCP tube may not break up.
For more information regarding this or related research, feel free to contact me or consult any of the following homepages:
UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
NIST Center for Theoretical and Computational Materials Science