title: Isotropic-nematic interfacial tension of hard and soft rods: application of advanced grand canonical biased-sampling techniques.
abstract: Coexistence between the isotropic and the nematic phase in suspensions of rods is studied using grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations with a bias on the nematic order parameter. The biasing scheme makes it possible to estimate the interfacial tension gamma(IN) in systems of hard and soft rods. For hard rods with LD=15, we obtain gammaIN approximately 1.4kBT/L2, with L the rod length, D the rod diameter, T the temperature, and kB the Boltzmann constant. This estimate is in good agreement with theoretical predictions, and the order of magnitude is consistent with experiments.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, D-55099 Mainz, Staudinger Weg 7, Germany. vink@uni-mainz.de
authors.forename: R L C
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Vink
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wolfsheimer
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Schilling