The nematic-isotropic phase transition: application of the Andrews method

Abstract

We have extended the Andrews method to derive the thermodynamic properties of an ensemble of spherocylinders. In the case of hard spherocylinders, by using the virial coefficients of the isotropic phase which agree with the results of recent computer simulation studies, we have determined several properties near the nematic-isotropic phase transition point in the mean field approximation. Including the attractive part of the potential, the values derived from the model are in reasonably good agreement with experimental data and in fact show considerable improvements over the currently available model calculations. In particular, the results are compared with those based on the scaled particle theory.