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Many soft-matter and biophysical systems are composed of monomers whichreversibly assemble into rod-like aggregates. The aggregates can then orderinto liquid-crystal phases if the density is high enough, and liquid-crystalordering promotes increased growth of aggregates. Systems that display coupledaggregation and liquid-crystal ordering include wormlike micelles, chromonicliquid crystals, DNA and RNA, and protein polymers and fibrils. Coarse-grainedmolecular models that capture key features of coupled aggregation andliquid-crystal ordering common to many different systems are lacking; inparticular, the role of monomer aspect ratio and aggregate flexibility incontrolling the phase behavior are not well understood. Here we study a minimalsystem of sticky cylinders using Monte Carlo simulations and analytic theory.Cylindrical monomers interact primarily by hard-core interactions but can stackand bind end to end. We present results for several different cylinder aspectratios and a range of end-to-end binding energies. The phase diagrams arequalitatively similar to those of chromonic liquid crystals, with anisotropic-nematic-columnar triple point. The location of the triple point issensitive to the monomer aspect ratio.We find that the aggregate persistencelength varies with temperature in a way that is controlled by the interactionpotential; this suggests that the form of the interaction potential affects thephase behavior of the system. Our analytic theory shows improvement compared toprevious theory in quantitatively predicting the I-N transition for relativelystiff aggregates, but requires a better treatment of aggregate flexibility.

Linear aggregation and liquid-crystalline order: comparison of Monte Carlo simulation and analytic theory