Long diblock copolymers introduced into a blend of thermodynamically incompatible homopolymers can act as a surfactant to suppress macroscopic phase separation of the blend. As the fraction of diblock copolymer is varied, an isotropic Lifshitz tricritical point is observed in the mean-field equations, demarking the crossover from macrophase to microphase separation. Close to the Lifshitz point, fluctuations are strong enough to supress the low-temperature formation of a well-ordered microphase, leading to appearance of a long-lived bicontinuous microemulsion characterized by micron-scale continuous domains.In this work, we discuss computational strategies for simulating the equilibrium formation of the microemulsion using field-theoretic methods, including the challenges involved in accurately localizing the order-disorder transition in a fluctuating theory and the handling of strong fluctuations close to the Lifshitz point.

Fully fluctuating field-theoretic simulations of bicontinuous microemulsions in polymer blends

244th National Meeting (2012)

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