Morphological Phase Separation in Unstable Thin Films: Pattern Formation and Growth

TL;DR

This paper presents a detailed numerical analysis of morphological phase separation in unstable thin liquid films, revealing self-similar late-stage patterns and drawing parallels with binary mixture segregation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive quantitative characterization of MPS in thin films, highlighting dynamical scaling and self-similarity in pattern evolution.

Findings

Late-stage morphologies exhibit dynamical scaling.

Evolution is self-similar over time.

Analogies with binary mixture segregation are identified.

Abstract

We present results from a comprehensive numerical study of {\it morphological phase separation} (MPS) in unstable thin liquid films on a 2-dimensional substrate. We study the quantitative properties of the evolution morphology via several experimentally relevant markers, e.g., correlation function, structure factor, domain-size and defect-size probability distributions, and growth laws. Our results suggest that the late-stage morphologies exhibit dynamical scaling, and their evolution is self-similar in time. We emphasize the analogies and differences between MPS in films and segregation kinetics in unstable binary mixtures.