Formation of Interfaces in Incompatible Polymer Blends: A Dynamical Mean Field Study

The interdiffusion dynamics of a polymer interface towards its equilibrium profile is studied using a dynamical mean field method, in which the nonequilibrium chemical potentials are evaluated numerically using the full polymer mean field free energy. Our results demonstrated that the interfacial width grows as t 1/4 at early times and saturates to the equilibrium thickness at long times, in agreement with previous, more approximate analysis based on Cahn−Hilliard-type theories. Furthermore, we show that the dynamical exponent can only be obtained unequivocally via a scaling analysis. The interdiffusion of a polymer interface in the single phase regime is also studied.