ON THE DISPERSION OF LATEX-PARTICLES IN A NEMATIC SOLUTION .1. EXPERIMENTAL-EVIDENCE AND A SIMPLE-MODEL

Latex polyballs are suspended in an isotropic micellar solution which exhibits a nematic phase at low temperatures. At the transition, we ob serve that the particles are either retained or expelled from the stru ctured phase depending on their size. A mean field theory with two cou pled order parameters is proposed to account for this behavior at the transition. The experimental and theoretical phase diagrams are in qua litative agreement.