Interplay between spinodal decomposition and wetting in ternary to quinary mixtures
Abstract
We use two-dimensional phase-field simulations based on the Cahn--Hilliard description to study spinodal decomposition in N-component mixtures with N = 3, 4, 5. In particular, we consider surface-directed spinodal decomposition in which one of the coexisting phases serves as a filler particle, while the remaining components phase separate around its surface. We investigate both nonwetting and wetting conditions by varying the interfacial tensions between the particle and the other components. The competition between wetting kinetics and spinodal decomposition produces rich morphological evolution, including the formation of lattice, droplet, and target (or core-shell) morphologies. The target pattern consists of alternating component-rich rings around the particle. In the intermediate-to-late time regime, these structures undergo further morphological transitions driven by curvature-induced depletion of wetting layers and subsequent coarsening of the surrounding domains, resulting in the breakup of target patterns into isolated domains of the matrix components. We find that domain coarsening slows down systematically as the number of components increases, while wetting accelerates it in all cases. The resulting morphologies and phase-separation pathways demonstrate how particle--component interactions can be used to control microstructural evolution in multicomponent mixtures, with potential implications for systems ranging from industrial materials to cellular biology.
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BibTeX
@misc{kumar2026interplay,
title = {{Interplay between spinodal decomposition and wetting in ternary to quinary mixtures}},
author = {Sandeep Kumar and Supriyo Ghosh},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.06946},
eprint = {2610.06946},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06946},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Interplay between spinodal decomposition and wetting in ternary to quinary mixtures
AU - Sandeep Kumar
AU - Supriyo Ghosh
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/03
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.06946
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06946
AB - We use two-dimensional phase-field simulations based on the Cahn--Hilliard description to study spinodal decomposition in N-component mixtures with N = 3, 4, 5. In particular, we consider surface-directed spinodal decomposition in which one of the coexisting phases serves as a filler particle, while the remaining components phase separate around its surface. We investigate both nonwetting and wetting conditions by varying the interfacial tensions between the particle and the other components. The competition between wetting kinetics and spinodal decomposition produces rich morphological evolution, including the formation of lattice, droplet, and target (or core-shell) morphologies. The target pattern consists of alternating component-rich rings around the particle. In the intermediate-to-late time regime, these structures undergo further morphological transitions driven by curvature-induced depletion of wetting layers and subsequent coarsening of the surrounding domains, resulting in the breakup of target patterns into isolated domains of the matrix components. We find that domain coarsening slows down systematically as the number of components increases, while wetting accelerates it in all cases. The resulting morphologies and phase-separation pathways demonstrate how particle--component interactions can be used to control microstructural evolution in multicomponent mixtures, with potential implications for systems ranging from industrial materials to cellular biology.
ER -