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Isotropic-nematic interfacial tension of hard and soft rods: application of advanced grand canonical biased sampling techniques

R. L. C. Vink·S. Wolfsheimer·T. Schilling
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Abstract

Coexistence between the isotropic and the nematic phase in suspensions of rods is studied using grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations with a bias on the nematic order parameter. The biasing scheme makes it possible to estimate the interfacial tension gamma in systems of hard and soft rods. For hard rods with L/D=15, we obtain gamma ~ 1.4 kB T/L^2, with L the rod length, D the rod diameter, T the temperature, and kB the Boltzmann constant. This estimate is in good agreement with theoretical predictions, and the order of magnitude is consistent with experiments.

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R. L. C. Vink, S. Wolfsheimer, T. Schilling. 2005-06-15. Isotropic-nematic interfacial tension of hard and soft rods: application of advanced grand canonical biased sampling techniques. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2000237

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