An external potential dynamic study on the formation of interface in polydisperse polymer blends

TL;DR

This study investigates how interfaces form and broaden over time in polydisperse polymer blends using a nonlocal dynamic model that accounts for chain correlations, revealing power-law behavior and the influence of polydispersity.

Contribution

It introduces a nonlocal coupling model incorporating chain correlations and polydispersity effects into the dynamic study of interface formation in polymer blends.

Findings

Interface broadening follows a power law at early times.

Power law index is larger than in local coupling models.

Correlation introduces an additional characteristic length affecting interface width.

Abstract

The formation of interface from an initial sharp interface in polydisperse A/B blends is studied using the external potential dynamic method. The present model is a nonlocal coupling model as we take into account the correlation between segments in a single chain. The correlation is approximately expressed by Debye function and the diffusion dynamics are based on the Rouse chain model. The chain length distribution is described by the continuous Schulz distribution. Our numerical calculation indicates that the broadening of interface with respect to time obeys a power law at early times, and the power law indexes are the same for both monodisperse and polydisperse blend. The power law index is larger than that in the local coupling model. However there is not a unified scaling form of the broadening of the interface width if only the interfacial width at equilibrium is taken into account as the characteristic length of the system, because the correlation makes an extra characteristic length in the system, and the polydispersity is related to this length.