Kinetics of phase transition in a lyotropic liquid-crystalline polymer system

The radius R, the radius distribution function, and the number density of growing cholesteric droplets in metastable solutions' of cellulose tris-(phenyl carbamate) (CTC) were measured as function of time t after quench, by polarizing microscopy. From the R dependence of the growth rate of cholesteric droplets, we concluded that the rate-determining process in the cholesteric droplet growth is the orientation of CTC molecules at the isotropic-cholesteric interface.