Martínez-Ratón, YuriCuesta, José A.2010-02-252010-02-252002-10-28Physical Review Letters, 89, 185701 (2002)0031-9007 (Print)1079-7114 (Online)https://hdl.handle.net/10016/70364 pages, 2 figures.-- PACS nrs.: 64.70.Md, 61.20.Gy, 64.75.+g.-- ArXiv pre-print available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0206576Final publisher version available Open Access at: http://gisc.uc3m.es/~cuesta/papers-year.htmlThe phase diagram of a polydisperse mixture of uniaxial rodlike and platelike hard parallelepipeds is determined for aspect ratios κ=5 and 15. All particles have equal volume, and polydispersity is introduced in a highly symmetric way. The corresponding binary mixture is known to have a biaxial phase for κ=15, but to be unstable against demixing into two uniaxial nematics for κ=5. The phase diagram for κ=15 is qualitatively similar to that of the binary mixture, regardless of the amount of polydispersity, while for κ=5 a sufficient amount of polydispersity stabilizes the biaxial phase. This provides clues for designing an experiment to observe this long searched biaxial phase.application/pdfeng© The American Physical Society[PACS] Transitions in liquid crystals[PACS] Theory and models of liquid structure[PACS] Phase equilibriaresearch articleMatemáticas10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.185701open access