Surface effects on spinodal decomposition of incompressible binary fluid mixtures

We demonstrate the first three-dimensional simulations of bicontinuous spinodal decomposition of incompressible binary fluid mixtures in a confined geometry. We find that after an initial transient the thickness of a wetting layer L grows with time t as L ∼ t 1/3 by a diffusion process and later as L ∼ t by a hydrodynamic one. We confirm that the hydrodynamic pumping of fluid via bicontinuous tubes plays dominant roles in the late-stage thickening dynamics of a wetting layer. A domain connected to the wetting layer grows faster than in bulk, which is suggestive of the hydrodynamic origin of the fast-mode kinetics found by Wiltzius and Cumming.