Morphology Development in Liquid-Crystal/Polymer Mixtures

Polymerization-induced phase separation

A molecular dynamics simulation is performed to study the kinetics of microphase separation in a polymer-dispersed-liquid-crystal forming process. An equimolar mixture of monomers and liquid crystal molecules are thermalized in a well mixed state. The monomers are then polymerized at the same temperature. The end product is a spanning gel with liquid crystal molecules aggregating in droplets here and there. The peak position of the equal-time structure function suggests that the growth of the droplets may be described with t(-0.23). The small growth exponent is just one of several features which may be attributed to the growing elastic gel. We argue that the aggregation is driven by entropy.