Mixtures of discotic and spherical soft particles: de-mixing, liquid crystal behaviour and relative solubility

Phase behaviour of mixtures of charged soft disks and spheres

“…in ESI. Similar values were found for the non-charged mixtures20 as well as for the pure discotic GB investigated by Bates and Luckhurst 27. Soft Matter Accepted ManuscriptOpen Access Article.…”

“…Open The system with 0.0 has been already described in details 𝑞 * 𝐺𝐵 = in Ref. 20 The charged systems with 0.5 and 1.0 𝑞 * 𝐺𝐵 = 𝑞 * 𝐺𝐵 = have a similar qualitative behaviour. At high reduced temperatures they are in an isotropic and homogeneously mixed phase, see Figure 2a), for (additional 𝑞 * 𝐺𝐵 = 1.0, snapshots for the other systems can be found in ESI) and the order parameters and are close to zero.…”

“…The presence of a opposite charge on the two types of particles prevents the macroscopic phase separation which is observed in the non-charged cases studied in our previous paper. 20 However, the excluded volume interactions are still important when the magnitude of the charge is relatively low and the volume fraction of spheres is relatively large. This combined effect leads to a lamellar structure where layers of disks are alternating with layers of spheres.…”

“…All the systems have the same packing 𝑞 * 𝐺𝐵 fraction (η) equal to 0.5023, which is the same used in our previous work with mixtures of uncharged particles. 20 Simulations were run in cascade starting from a hightemperature isotropic mixed phase. Cooling runs were followed by heating runs to assess the presence of hysteresis.…”

“…The macroscopic phase separation of uncharged LJ and GB occurs at low T* and two distinct phases are found: a columnar hexagonal one and an isotropic one. 20 The introduction of charges disfavors the de-mixing process and the segregation of phases. However, for the relatively small charge of 0.5, see Figure 8b), we still observe a clear short-range microphase segregation between disks and speres, while increasing the value of leads to a more homogeneous 𝑞 * distribution of spheres within the GB matrix.…”