Phase separation kinetics of main-chain liquid crystalline polymers

We investigate phase separation kinetics of main-chain liquid crystalline polymers (LCPs) by numerical calculations based on a continuum description. We introduce two order parameters, the density and the orientational order of LCPs and construct a set of time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equations to describe the dynamics of these two order parameters. We show that the morphology of the phase-separated system is crucially influenced by the coupling between the density and the orientational order which appears in the kinetics as well as in the free energy.