Quantitative analysis of phase formation and growth in ternary mixtures upon evaporation of one component

TL;DR

This study quantitatively analyzes phase separation and domain growth in ternary mixtures during evaporation using Monte Carlo simulations, comparing models and exploring factors affecting growth exponents relevant to organic solar cells.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of phase separation dynamics in different models, including effects of evaporation, concentration, and temperature, with implications for organic solar cell morphology.

Findings

Reproduces the 1/3 growth exponent for the Ising model.

Finds lower growth exponents in ternary models with and without evaporation.

Highlights complex phase separation patterns in ternary systems.

Abstract

We perform a quantitative analysis of Monte Carlo simulations results of phase separation in ternary blends upon evaporation of one component. Specifically, we calculate the average domain size and plot it as a function of simulation time to compute the exponent of the obtained power-law. We compare and discuss results obtained by two different methods, for three different models: 2D binary-state model (Ising model), 2D ternary-state model with and without evaporation. For the ternary-state models, we study additionally the dependence of the domain growth on concentration, temperature and initial composition. We reproduce the expected 1/3 exponent for the Ising model, while for the ternary-state model without evaporation and for the one with evaporation we obtain lower values of the exponent. It turns out that phase separation patterns that can form in this type of systems are complex. The obtained quantitative results give valuable insights towards devising computable theoretical estimations of size effects on morphologies as they occur in the context of organic solar cells.