Coarsening dynamics of ternary polymer solutions with mobility and viscosity contrasts

Jan Ulric Garcia; Douglas R Tree; Alyssa Bagoyo; Tatsuhiro Iwama; Kris T Delaney; Glenn H Fredrickson

doi:10.1063/5.0173992

Coarsening dynamics of ternary polymer solutions with mobility and viscosity contrasts

J Chem Phys. 2023 Dec 7;159(21):214904. doi: 10.1063/5.0173992.

Authors

Jan Ulric Garcia^{1

2}, Douglas R Tree³, Alyssa Bagoyo³, Tatsuhiro Iwama², Kris T Delaney⁴, Glenn H Fredrickson^{1

4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
² Asahi Kasei Corporation, 2-1 Samejima, Fuji, Shizuoka 416-8501, Japan.
³ Department of Chemical Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602, USA.
⁴ Materials Research Laboratory, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
⁵ Department of Materials, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.

PMID: 38054518
DOI: 10.1063/5.0173992

Abstract

Using phase-field simulations, we investigate the bulk coarsening dynamics of ternary polymer solutions undergoing a glass transition for two models of phase separation: diffusion only and with hydrodynamics. The glass transition is incorporated in both models by imposing mobility and viscosity contrasts between the polymer-rich and polymer-poor phases of the evolving microstructure. For microstructures composed of polymer-poor clusters in a polymer-rich matrix, the mobility and viscosity contrasts significantly hinder coarsening, effectively leading to structural arrest. For microstructures composed of polymer-rich clusters in a polymer-poor matrix, the mobility and viscosity contrasts do not impede domain growth; rather, they change the transient concentration of the polymer-rich phase, altering the shape of the discrete domains. This effect introduces several complexities to the coarsening process, including percolation inversion of the polymer-rich and polymer-poor phases-a phenomenon normally attributed to viscoelastic phase separation.