English Abstract

Development of the Simulator for the Phase Separated Structure of Spherical Filler and Binary Polymer Blended System

Hiroshi MORITA
Yuko AOYANAGI
Hideki KOBAYASHI
Nanosystem Reserch Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan
Nippon Gomu Kyokaishi,(2013),86(7),222-226 Original Paper in Japanese

We made the simulation program to simulate the phase separated structure of the polymer blend with spherical filler particles in a very short time based on the method by Laradji. In our programs, the motions of filler and the polymer phases are driven by the gradient of the free energy included the interaction between fillers and between filler and polymer phases. As a free energy of the phase separated structures, time dependent Ginzburg Landau free energy is used. Simulation was conducted in the two or three dimensional simulation boxes. Several trial simulations were done to check the availability of our simulation programs. In the early stage of our simulation, the spinodal ring structure can be observed which was already simulated by Lee et al. As times go on, the domain growth proceeded and the filler particles also moved along the domain growth. In our results, the bicontinuous and the droplet's structures can be obtained with changing the number of filler particles. These results are also observed by Araki et al. using fluid particle dynamics methods, and we confirm that we can also simulate the previously observed structures using our method. Furthermore we can simulate the phase separated structures in three dimensional systems, and we can also confirm the structures obtained by two dimensional simulations.

Keywords: Phase separated structures, time dependent Ginzburg Landau method, polymer blend, spherical filler