Ferroelectric Liquid Crystalline Ordering of Rigid Rods with Dipolar Interactions

Abstract

Abstract A mean-field model for the ferroelectric ordering of hard sphero-cylinders with dipolar interaction is developed within the Onsager formalism. By performing accurate numerical analyses, a complete phase diagram is obtained in terms of the dipolar strength, the number density, and the pressure of the spherocylinders, which exhibits a usual isotropic-nematic, a nematic-ferroelectric nematic, and a direct isotropic-ferroelectric nematic phase transitions. These results are in reasonable agreement with the recent computer simulations. It is also found that there exists always a direct isotropic-ferroelectric nematic phase transition above a critical dipolar strength.