Nematic phase

Nematic phase for the hard 6x1x1 ellipsoid model.

The nematic phase of a liquid crystal has orientational order, but no positional order .

Dielectric tensor

In the uniaxial nematic phase, defining the z-axis to be parallel to the nematic axis, one has

$\epsilon _{\alpha \beta }={\begin{pmatrix}\epsilon _{\bot }&0&0\\0&\epsilon _{\bot }&0\\0&0&\epsilon _{\|}\end{pmatrix}}$

The anisotropy is defined as

$\Delta \epsilon =\epsilon _{\|}-\epsilon _{\bot }$.

The response of a nematic liquid crystal to an external electric field depends on both the sign and the magnitude of $\Delta \epsilon$.

Discotic nematic phase

Discotic-nematic phase for the hard 6x6x1 ellipsoid model.

Biaxial nematic phase

• Jorge Peláez and Mark R. Wilson "Atomistic Simulations of a Thermotropic Biaxial Liquid Crystal", Physical Review Letters 97 267801 (2006)
• Carl McBride and Enrique Lomba "Hard biaxial ellipsoids revisited: Numerical results", Fluid Phase Equilibria 255 pp. 37-45 (2007)
• Roberto Berardi, Luca Muccioli, and Claudio Zannoni "Field response and switching times in biaxial nematics", Journal of Chemical Physics 128 024905 (2008)
• Roberto Berardi, Luca Muccioli, Silvia Orlandi, Matteo Ricci and Claudio Zannoni "Computer simulations of biaxial nematics", Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter 20 463101 (2008)
• Prabir K. Mukherjee and Kallol Sen "On a new topology in the phase diagram of biaxial nematic liquid crystals", Journal of Chemical Physics 130 141101 (2009)