doi: 10.1209/0295-5075/79/26004 Hydrodynamics and growth laws in lamellar ordering

PACS 64.75.+g – Solubility, segregation, and mixing; phase separation PACS 47.54.-r – Pattern selection; pattern formation PACS 82.35.Jk – Copolymers, phase transitions, structure Abstract – Ordering of lamellar phases described by a free-energy functional with short-range interactions is numerically investigated in two dimensions by means of a pseudo-spectral method. The ordering process is found to depend on the fluid viscosity: it is arrested for large viscosity values and proceeds as a power law for small ones, with a crossover regime for intermediate values. At varying the free energy parameters, strong evidence has been found that the ordering law, unlike binary mixtures, is not unique. Copyright c ○ EPLA, 2007 Introduction. – In many complex fluids the competition between attractive and repulsive interactions stabilizes pattern formation with modulated structures. Lamellar phases are a typical example observed, e.g., in block copolymer melts [1], oil-water surfactan