Effect of cross-link density on the nematic–isotropic phase transition in liquid crystal elastomers

In this paper, we report results of non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo simulation of a cubic lattice model of a liquid crystal elastomer. A pseudo-Hamiltonian proposed recently forms the basis of our simulation. We have employed Frontier sampling in conjunction with Wang–Landau algorithm which helps sample the microstate space in such a way that all energy regions are visited with equal probability. We investigate the interplay between the nematic and elastic degrees of freedom. We find that with increase of cross-link density of the polymer chains, the nematic–isotropic transition becomes weaker.