ON THE ORIENTATIONAL ORDERING OF FLEXIBLE MESOGENIC MOLECULES

A general discussion of orientational ordering of mesogenic molecules with conformational flexibility is presented. It is emphasized that internal conformational and external reorientation motions can be separated in a local frame in which a local order tensor of a rigid subunit is well-defined. The local order tensor may be diagonal and its temperature dependence can therefore be compared with the molecular field theory of rigid molecules. 7 refs.