학술논문

Interface repulsion and lamellar structures in thin films of homopolymer blends due to thermal oscillations
Document Type
Working Paper
Source
Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 237801 (2019)
Subject
Condensed Matter - Soft Condensed Matter
Language
Abstract
In equilibrium the interface potential that describes the interaction between two AB interfaces in a binary blend of A and B homopolymers is attractive at all distances, resulting in coarsening of the blend morphology even in the absence of interface curvature. We demonstrate that the dissipative assembly in response to a time-periodic variation of the blend incompatibility qualitatively alters this behavior, i.e., for suitable parameters the interface potential exhibits a periodic spatial modulation and AB interfaces adopt a well-defined distance. We explore for which oscillation periods and amplitudes an interface repulsion occurs and demonstrate that we can control the preferred interface distance over a wide range by varying the oscillation period. Using particle-based simulations we explicitly demonstrate that this dissipative assembly of a homopolymer blend results in a lamellar structure with multiple planar interfaces in a thin film geometry.