Inhomogeneous binary mixture, free

Non-Random Systems. As pointed out by Cahn and Hilliard(10,11), phase separation in the thermodynamically unstable region may lead to a non-random morphology via spinodal decomposition. This model is especially convenient for discussing the development of phase separating systems. In the linearized Cahn-Hilliard approach, the free energy of an inhomogeneous binary mixture is taken as ... 

Here the gradient square term describes the extra free energy cost due to concentration inhomogeneities. Boltzmann s constant is denoted as and the parameter r then has dimensions of length (in microscopic models, e.g., lattice models of binary mixtures treated in mean-field approximation, r has the meaning of the range of pairwise interactions among the particles). 

In order to describe the diffusive dynamics of composition fluctuations in binary mixtures one can extend the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau methods to the free energy functional of the SCF theory. The approach relies on two ingredients a free energy functional that accurately describes the chemical potential of a spatially inhomogeneous composition distribution out of equilibrium and an Onsager coefficient that relates the variation of the chemical potential to the current of the composition. 

A modified Cahn-Hilliard (CH) model [114] is used for the theoretical analysis of the impact of thermal diffusion on phase separation by taking into account an inhomogeneous temperature distribution, which couples to a concentration variation via the Soret effect. The Flory-Huggins model is used for the free energy of binary polymer-mixtures. The composition is naturally measured in terms of volume fraction 0 of a component A, which can be related to the weight fraction c by... 

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