Time resolved statistical analysis of liquid crystal nucleus growth from the isotropic melt

Nonisothermal Model for the Direct Isotropic/Smectic-A Liquid-Crystalline Transition

“…Inclusion of the latent heat contribution from phase-ordering causes the interfacial temperature to approach the bulk transition temperature T b , which subsequently causes the free energy driving force of the isotropic/smectic-A transition to approach zero. Thus, under these conditions, thermal diffusion limits growth resulting in dynamics converging to a power law exponent of n = 1 2 as observed experimentally [33,34,64,65] and predicted theoretically [32,35,66] for liquid crystal growth under shallow quench/undercooling conditions. In the case of metastable nematic pre-ordering, the evolution of the isotropic/metastable nematic front temperature reveals the influence of the latent heat contribution of the trailing smectic-A front.…”

“…5a shows that the inclusion of latent heat effects corrects the standard Landau-de Gennes model prediction of constant growth to that consistent with experimental observations of this specific system [34] and other liquid crystal mesophases [33,34,64,65]. 5b shows that in addition to the correction to the growth law, the trend and magnitude of the interface velocity is modified.…”

“…However, past experimental work by Dierking et al on growth laws of different types of pure-component liquid crystal mesophases [33,34,64,65], including a study of the direct isotropic/smectic-A transition [34]. The culmination of this work, following the findings of Huisman and Fassolino [32], includes a generalized non-isothermal model [66] showing the growth law evolution as a function of quench depth.…”

Kinetics of the thermally induced precursor curing to polymer via statistical analysis of TEM images

“…Taking into account our previous investigations related to thermally/chemically induced transformation of polyamic acids to polyimides [8,10] and the phase ordering in the liquid crystalline system [11,12], we may conclude that statistical analysis of the micro-structure is a powerful instrument for study of chemical/physical changes in different materials resulting in variation of their macroscopic properties.…”

“…Using this model, ensembles of micro-domains in polymers with different chemical structures [6][7][8], carbon black particles and clusters in rubbers [6,7], bacteria and yeast [7] have been described. The model has also allowed description of kinetic processes: chemical transformation of polyamic acids to polyimides [8,10] and the phase ordering in the liquid crystalline system [11,12].…”