Kinetics of thermally induced phase separation in ternary polymer solutions. II. Comparison of theory and experiment

Modeling the competition between phase separation and polymerization under explicit polydispersity

“…ξ = 2 is chosen to be sufficiently large to ensure that , with small fluctuations allowed to aid in the numerical stability of our scheme. This allows our scheme to depart from conventional approaches to solving the Cahn–Hilliard equation, which instead enforce mass conservation () exactly by considering n − 1 transport equations versus a reference component; 45–47,54,62,76 we find our approach to be more numerically convenient.…”

“…transport equations versus a reference component; [45][46][47]54,62,76 we find our approach to be more numerically convenient.…”

“…In polymeric systems, the combination of Flory-Huggins and Cahn-Hilliard models has been used to model binary [36][37][38] and ternary 39,40,43 melt blends, as well as polymer solutions. [44][45][46][47][48][49][50] The key advantage of this approach is that it can access larger time and length scales compared to the particle-based simulations, and has been further modified to account for more complicated systems with additional features like reactions 38,48,49,[51][52][53][54][55][56] or coupled to other equations like the (Navier-)Stokes equation. 36,57,58 The Cahn-Hilliard formalism has led to key insights in the phase separation of polymer bends, for example by quantifying the nature of concentration fluctuations as they grow into larger inhomogeneities during the early stages of phase separation in initially-homogenous and isotropic systems.…”

Measurement of cloud point temperature in polymer solutions

“…Often the cloud point detection is made out visually. 8,10,13,[27][28][29] However, this methodology is only qualitative rather than deterministic and quantitative.…”