Doubly degenerate diffuse interface models of anisotropic surface diffusion

Abstract

We extend the doubly degenerate Cahn–Hilliard (DDCH) models for isotropic surface diffusion, which yield more accurate approximations than classical degenerate Cahn–Hilliard (DCH) models, to the anisotropic case. We consider both weak and strong anisotropies and demonstrate the capabilities of the approach for these cases numerically. The proposed model provides a variational and energy dissipative approach for anisotropic surface diffusion, enabling large-scale simulations with material-specific parameters.