Unusual Coarsening During Phase Separation in Polymer Systems

Abstract

We introduce a kinetic model of coarsening of transient polymer networks during the intermediate stages of phase separation in polymer systems. The model explicitly takes into account the effect of the connectivity of polymer chains. We show that during the intermediate stages the size of the droplet grows according to an unusual coarsening law $R \sim t^{1/(d + 3)}$. When the network structure breaks up, the coarsening law may cross over to $R \sim \ln t^{-1}$, until only at very late stages the Lifshitz-Slyozov coarsening law $R \sim t^{1/3}$ is recovered.