Formation of Interfaces in Incompatible Polymer Blends: A Dynamical Mean Field Study

Abstract

The interdiffusion dynamics of a polymer interface towards its equilibrium profile is studied using a dynamical mean field method, in which the nonequilibrium chemical potentials are evaluated numerically using the full polymer mean field free energy. Our results demonstrated that the interfacial width grows as t1/4 at early times and saturates to the equilibrium thickness at long times, in agreement with previous, more approximate analysis based on Cahn−Hilliard-type theories. Furthermore, we show that the dynamical exponent can only be obtained unequivocally via a scaling analysis. The interdiffusion of a polymer interface in the single phase regime is also studied.