Isotropic solid– nematic solid transitions in fluids of hard spheres

Abstract

We study in this paper the phase behaviour of a system of particles interacting via the isotropic Yukawa and nematic Mayer-Saupe interactions. We perform a similar study as in [A. Oukouiss, A. Chourak, and L. Zealouk, AIP Conference Proceedings 2345, 020033 (2021)] but for the nematic solid phase. We have developed the calculation of free energy for this phase. We have found that the topology of the phase diagram depends sensitively on the relative strengths of the isotropic and nematic interactions.