title: A computer simulation study of the influence of a liquid crystal medium on polymerization.
abstract: We present a simple molecular level model based on Gay-Berne monomers linked by finitely extendable nonlinear elastic potential bonds for describing main chain polymerization in liquid crystals. We apply the model to study the influence that the order of the medium has on the characteristics of the chains obtained. We find that the chains prepared from the nematic are actually straighter than those obtained from a polymerization in the isotropic phase and that they are characterized by a small number of hairpins as experimentally observed.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Chimica Fisica e Inorganica, and INSTM, Università di Bologna, Viale Risorgimento 4, 40136 Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Berardi
authors.forename: Davide
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Micheletti
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Muccioli
authors.forename: Matteo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ricci
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zannoni