Liquid crystalline properties of solutions of persistent polymer chains

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Abstract
A synthesis of theories for the orientational entropy and excluded volume interaction for persistent chain polymers at intermediate degrees of chain flexibility, when extended to liquidlike densities, is shown to satisfactorily account for experimental data on the volume fractions of polymer at coexistence of isotropic and anisotropic phases, the concentration dependence of the order parameter within the lyotropic liquid crystal and the osmotic pressure equation of state for several extended chain polymers. Results of this continuum model are also compared with the virial approximation and treatments of the macromolecule as a rigid rod.