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Published July 8, 2004 | Published
Journal Article Open

Nucleation in binary polymer blends: Effects of foreign mesoscopic spherical particles

Abstract

We study nucleation in binary polymer blends in the presence of mesoscopic spherical particles using self-consistent field theory, considering both heterogeneous and homogeneous nucleation mechanisms. Heterogeneous nucleation is found to be highly sensitive to surface selectivity and particle size, with rather subtle dependence on the particle size. Particles that preferentially adsorb the nucleating species generally favor heterogeneous nucleation. For sufficiently strong adsorption, barrierless nucleation is possible. By comparing the free energy barrier for homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation, we construct a kinetic phase diagram.

Additional Information

©2004 American Institute of Physics. Received: 25 February 2004; accepted: 21 April 2004. Financial support by the NSF of China and the Special Project for Fundamental Researches of the Ministry of Science and Technology are acknowledged. Z.G.W. acknowledges the support by the US National Science Foundation (Grant No. DMR-9970589). J.F.W. thanks Hongdong Zhang and Feng Qiu for very helpful discussions.

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August 22, 2023
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