We
investigated how very strong confinement, smaller than the polymer
persistence length l
p, affects the isotropic–nematic
transition for semiflexible polymer solutions using GPU-accelerated
Langevin dynamics. Walls facilitate polymer alignment, and under strong
quasi-two-dimensional slitlike confinement, the I–N transition
is found to be a continuous transition occurring via capillary nematization.
We found that the I–N transition in the slit is a second-order
transition, and the transition volume fraction ϕcr decreases with decrease of the slit height H. For H < l
p, the critical exponent
of the order parameter is found to be β ≈ 0.3–0.5.
β sharply increases for H higher than a critical
height, indicating the onset of a different wall-induced phase transition.
Higher ϕcr are found for larger H, which is associated with increased monomer packing near the walls
and correspond to the partial wetting transition predicted by self-consistent
field theory.
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