Kinetics of Spinodal Phase Separation in Unstable Thin Liquid Films

Abstract

We study universality in the kinetics of spinodal phase separation in unstable thin liquid films, via simulations of the thin film equation. It is shown that in addition to morphology and free energy,the number density of local maxima in the film profile can also be used to identify the early, intermediate and late stages of spinodal phase separation. A universal curve between the number density of local maxima and rescaled time describes the kinetics of early stage in d = 2, 3. The Lifshitz-Slyozov exponent of -1/3 describes the kinetics of the late stage in d = 2 even in the absence of coexisting equilibrium phases.

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References in corpus (1)

• Theory of Phase Ordering Kinetics

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Universality in Fluid Domain Coarsening: The case of vapor-liquid transition
• Aging and Crossovers in Phase-Separating Fluid Mixtures
• Surface-tension-driven coarsening in mass-conserved reaction-diffusion systems
• Morphological Phase Separation in Unstable Thin Films: Pattern Formation and Growth
• Spinodal Phase Separation in Liquid Films with Quenched Disorder
• Amplification of Fluctuations in Unstable Systems with Disorder