Freezing of Spinodal Decompostion by Irreversible Chemical Growth Reaction

TL;DR

This paper investigates how irreversible chemical reactions can halt or slow down spinodal decomposition in systems, leading to a frozen state, with implications for material formation processes like IPN.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical description of spinodal freezing caused by chemical reactions, extending understanding of phase separation dynamics under reactive conditions.

Findings

Chemical reactions can induce freezing of spinodal decomposition.

Reaction-driven freezing can be observed experimentally in IPN formation.

Spinodal decomposition can be significantly retarded or halted by reactions.

Abstract

We present a description of the freezing of spinodal decomposition in systems, which contain simultaneous irreversible chemical reactions, in the hydrodynamic limit approximation. From own results we conclude, that the chemical reaction leads to an onset of spinodal decomposition also in the case of an initial system which is completely miscible and can lead to an extreme retardation of the dynamics of the spinodal decomposition, with the probability of a general freezing of this process, which can be experimetally observed in simultaneous IPN formation.