Measurements of Interfacial Curvatures and Characterization of Bicontinuous Morphologies

Abstract

Studies of bicontinuous and interpenetrating domain structures developed in the process of spinodal decomposition (SD) of binary mixtures of molecular fluids, binary alloys, and polymer blends have been an attractive research theme over the past several decades [1]. Complex structures can be observed in the phase separation process induced by a temperature quench from the stable one-phase region into the unstable two-phase spinodal region. The fact that the dynamical processes in complex fluids such as polymer blends, glasses, and gels are extremely slow due to their long characteristic relaxation times allows one to study their morphologies with better accuracy than those of simple liquid mixtures [2].