title: Oscillatory instabilities in phase separation of binary mixtures: fixing the thermodynamic driving.
abstract: Binary liquid mixtures can show pronounced oscillations in the differential scanning calorimeter signal for the specific heat and in the turbidity when phase separation is induced by continuously ramping the temperature. For a fixed ramp rate, i.e., a linear temporal drift of temperature, only a small number of oscillations have been observed. In the present manuscript we describe an experimental setup where simultaneous video-microscopy and shadow-graph measurements can be performed on mixtures subjected to an arbitrary temporal temperature evolution. In particular, it can be adjusted to fix the thermodynamic driving force, which characterizes the rate of change of the composition of the coexisting phases. With this novel technique both the number of oscillations and the temperature interval where oscillations are observed increase significantly. This technique can easily be applied to a great variety of binary mixtures, permitting detailed investigations of their phase-separation kinetics under slowly ramping temperature.
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Ackermannweg 10, 53118 Mainz, Germany. guenter.auernhammer@ldfc.u-strasbg.fr
authors.forename: Günter K
authors.initials: GK
authors.lastname: Auernhammer
authors.forename: Doris
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Vollmer
authors.forename: Jürgen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Vollmer