Concentration dependence in the Landau-de Gennes theory for nematic lyotropic liquid crystals

The Letter presents an attempt to include the concentration dependence in t he Landau-de Gennes theory for the nematic to isotropic phase transition fo r nematic lyotropic liquid crystals by introducing a critical concentration for the lyotropic solutions. This allows to describe phase transitions of micellar solutions as depending on temperature and concentration. An estima tion of phenomenological coefficients of the CsPFO/water system is made, an d we obtained the trends of the order parameter curves in function of tempe rature and concentration in good agreement with experimental results from l iterature. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.