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In this work, we use molecular dynamics simulations to study the effect of volume exclusion on the phase transitions of a flat membrane of soft repulsive spherocylinders. With increasing rod packing, we identify liquid crystal and crystal phases and find that the disorder\u2013order phase transition happens at a universal packing fraction (\u03b7 \u2248 0.81), independent of the spherocylinder aspect ratio. We also confirm the existence of a small 2D hexatic region near the phase transition. The packing fraction associated with the phase transition is considerably higher than the well-known freezing transition of a hard disk fluid (\u03b7 \u2248 0.7) to which one could naively map a system of near-parallel rods with co-planar mass centers. We attribute this difference to non-vanishing residual orientational entropy per rod. Our findings are corroborated by a simple theory based on a simple microscopic density functional theory of freezing of a two-dimensional rod fluid. The strength of the orientational fluctuations of the individual rods in our membranes exhibits a density scaling that differs from 3D bulk smectics. Our findings contribute to a qualitative understanding of liquid crystal phase stability in strong planar confinement and engage with recent experimental explorations involving nanorods on 2D substrates.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1063\/5.0245950","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,4]],"date-time":"2025-04-04T06:39:07Z","timestamp":1743748747000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1063\/aip-crossmark-policy-page","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Freezing in flat monolayers of soft spherocylinders"],"prefix":"10.1063","volume":"162","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3025-869X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jaydeep","family":"Mandal","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Centre for Condensed Matter Theory, Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science 1 , Bengaluru 560012,","place":["India"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6284-7168","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Henricus H.","family":"Wensink","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Laboratoire de Physique des Solides - UMR 8502, CNRS, Universit\u00e9 Paris-Saclay 2 , 91405 Orsay,","place":["France"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9956-1136","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Prabal K.","family":"Maiti","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Centre for Condensed Matter Theory, Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science 1 , Bengaluru 560012,","place":["India"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"317","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,2]]},"reference":[{"key":"2025040205444999800_c1","volume-title":"The Physics of Liquid Crystals","year":"1993"},{"key":"2025040205444999800_c2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"929","DOI":"10.1038\/nmat2010","volume":"6","year":"2007","journal-title":"Nat. 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