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When liquid-crystalline elastomers pass through the isotropic-nematictransition, the orientational order parameter and the elastic strain varyrapidly but smoothly, without the expected first-order discontinuity. Thisbroadening of the phase transition is an important issue for applications ofliquid-crystalline elastomers as actuators or artificial muscles. To understandthis behavior, we develop a lattice model of liquid-crystalline elastomers,with local directors coupled to a global strain variable. In this model, we canconsider either random-bond disorder (representing chemical heterogeneity) orrandom-field disorder (representing heterogeneous local stresses). Monte Carlosimulations show that both types of disorder cause the first-orderisotropic-nematic transition to broaden into a smooth crossover, consistentwith the experiments. For random-field disorder, the smooth crossover into anordered state can be attributed to the long-range elastic interaction.Comment: 9 pages, including 5 postscript figures, uses REVTeX

Isotropic-nematic transition in liquid-crystalline elastomers: Lattice model with quenched disorder