This paper addresses the phenomenon of spinodal decomposition for the CahnHilliard equation. Namely, we are interested in why most solutions to the CahnHilliard equation which start near a homogeneous equilibrium u0 in the spinodal interval exhibit phase separation with a characteristic wavelength when exiting a ball of radius R. There are two mathematical explanations for spinodal decompositio...

Colloid-polymer mixtures can undergo spinodal decomposition into colloid-rich and colloid-poor regions. Gelation results when interconnected colloid-rich regions solidify. We show that this occurs when these regions undergo a glass transition, leading to dynamic arrest of the spinodal decomposition. The characteristic length scale of the gel decreases with increasing quench depth, and the noner...

Aggregation mechanisms of emulsions at high initial volume fractions (φ0 > 0.01) is studied using light scattering. We use emulsion droplets which can be made unstable towards aggregation by a temperature quench. For deep quenches and 0.1 > φ0 > 0.01, the aggregation mechanism is identified as diffusion-limited cluster aggregation (DLCA). An ordering of the clusters, which is reflected by a pea...

Spinodal decomposition is proposed for stabilizing self-assembled interfaces between topological insulators (TIs) by combining layers of iso-structural and iso-valent TlBiX2 (X = S, Se, Te) materials. The composition range for gapless states is addressed concurrently to the study of thermodynamically driven boundaries. By tailoring composition, the TlBiS2−TlBiTe2 system might produce both spino...

We re-explore the kinetics of spinodal decomposition in off-critical polymer blends through numerical simulations of the Cahn-Hilliard equation with the Flory-Huggins-De Gennes free energy functional. Even in the absence of thermal noise, the solution of the discretized equation of motion shows coarsening in the late stages of spinodal decomposition without evidence of pinning, regardless of th...