Morphology development and characterization of the phase-separated structure resulting from the thermal-induced phase separation phenomenon in polymer solutions under a temperature gradient

This paper studied the morphological development during the fabrication of anisotropic polymeric materials using the thermal-induced phase separation phenomenon (spinodal decomposition) in a model binary polymer solution under a linear spatial temperature gradient using mathematical modeling and computer simulation. The model incorporated the non-linear Cahn-Hilliard theory for spinodal decomposition and the Flory-Huggins theory for polymer solution thermodynamics. Moreover, the slow mode theory and Rouse law were used to account for polymer diffusion. The two-dimensional numerical results showed that an anisotropic morphology was developed when a temperature gradient was imposed along the polymer solution sample. The droplet size and droplet density decrease as temperature increases during the intermediate stage of spinodal decomposition. The spatial temperature gradient, however, had insignificant effect on the droplet shape.