RODS NEAR CURVED SURFACES AND IN CURVED BOXES

We consider an ideal gas of infinitely rigid rods near a perfectly rep ulsive wall, and show that the interfacial tension of a surface with r ods on one side is lower when the surface bends towards the rods. Surp risingly we find that rods on both sides of surfaces also lower the en ergy when the surface bends. We compute the partition functions of rod s confined to spherical and cylindrical open shells, and conclude that spherical shells repel rods, whereas cylindrical shells (for thicknes s of the shell on the order of the rod-length) attract them. The role of flexibility is investigated by considering chains composed of two r igid segments.