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

Abstract

The growth and coarsening of liquid crystalline (LC) nuclei at isothermal conditions after a temperature quench across the isotropic to cholesteric phase transition was investigated experimentally and described with the model of reversible aggregation. The time resolved statistical size distributions of LC nuclei, obtained from digital image analysis, reveals two principle processes involved in liquid crystal phase ordering: (i) short-term nucleus growth, including domain coalescence and (ii) long-time domain coarsening via a diffusion mechanism. In the statistical size distributions two individual statistical ensembles can be identified, most likely corresponding to the main components of the commercial LC mixture under investigation. Cell gap dependent studies suggest a cross-over from substrate influenced growth at sample spacing below approximately 10 μm to bulk behaviour for larger sandwich cell gaps.