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Morphology Development In Main-Chain Liquid Crystalline Polymer Fibers During Solvent Evaporation, Pratyush Dayal, Andrew Guenthner, Thein Kyu

Thein Kyu

A nonequilibrium thermodynamic approach has been developed for describing the emergence of fiber morphologies from a liquid crystalline polymer solution undergoing solvent evaporation, including fibrillar structures, concentric rings, and spiral structures. We utilized Matsuyama–Kato free energy for main-chain liquid crystalline polymer (MCLCP) solutions, which is an extension of Maier–Saupe theory for nematic ordering and incorporates a chain-stiffening, combined with Flory-Huggins free energy of mixing. Temporal evolution of the concentration and nematic order parameters pertaining to the above free energy density of liquid crystalline polymer solution was simulated in the context of time-dependent Ginzburg–Landau theory coupled with the solvent evaporation rate …