Phase separation kinetics of nematic polymers: Coupling between compositional order and orientational order

We numerically investigate phase separation kinetics of liquid crystalline polymers in a nematic state using time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equations for the compositional and the orientational order parameters $\phi$ and $S_{\mathrm{ij}}.$ The kinetics is significantly influenced by (i) the presence of the off-diagonal kinetic coefficient ${\Lambda }_{\phi S},$ (ii) the coupling between $\nabla \phi$ and $S_{\mathrm{ij}}$ in the free energy, and (iii) the dependence of the kinetic coefficients on the orientational order.