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Spinodal Decomposition in Ternary Systems with Significantly Different Component Diffusivities
Author(s) -
Alfarraj Abdulrahman A.,
Nauman E. Bruce
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
macromolecular theory and simulations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.37
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1521-3919
pISSN - 1022-1344
DOI - 10.1002/mats.200700025
Subject(s) - spinodal decomposition , polymer , ternary operation , diffusion , exponent , materials science , thermodynamics , ternary numeral system , particle (ecology) , component (thermodynamics) , spinodal , phase (matter) , statistical physics , chemical physics , chemistry , physics , composite material , organic chemistry , linguistics , philosophy , oceanography , geology , computer science , programming language
A numerical method for simulating spinodal decomposition in ternary systems with order‐of‐magnitude differences in diffusion coefficients is presented. The method has been partially verified by molecular dynamic simulations and gives results equivalent to the standard technique when the diffusivities are equal. A two‐dimensional simulation of an asymmetric polymer/polymer/polymer system reproduces an experimentally observed bimodal distribution of dispersed‐phase particle sizes. The ripening exponent for the larger particles is near the expected value of 0.33, but that for the smaller particles is only about 0.1. The method was also used for a polymer/polymer/solvent system.