Spinodal decomposition in ternary systems with significantly different component diffusivities

A numerical method for simulating spinodal decomposition in ternary systems with order-of-magnitude differences in diffusion coefficients is presented. The method has been partially verified by molecular dynamic simulations and gives results equivalent to the standard technique when the diffusivities are equal. A two-dimensional simulation of an asymmetric polymer/ polymer/polymer system reproduces an experimentally observed bimodal distribution of dispersed-phase particle sizes. The ripening exponent for the larger particles is near the expected value of 0.33, but that for the smaller particles is only about 01. The method was also used for a polymer/polymer/solvent system.