Liquid Crystalline Polymers As Ising Chains: Stretching and Swelling

Abstract
The extension of main-chain liquid crystalline polymers with hairpins in a nematic medium is analogous to the magnetization of a one-dimensional Ising model. The hairpins play the role of domain boundaries, the magnetic field is analogous to the tension while the end-to-end distance corresponds to the magnetization. The elastic free energy thus derived is incorporated into a Flory-type theory of the swelling of a liquid crystalline chain in a good nematic solvent.

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