title: Thermally induced phase separation in levitated polymer droplets.
abstract: We report thermally induced rapid phase separation in PS/PVME polymer blends using a unique contact free droplet based architecture. De-mixing of homogeneous blends due to inter component dynamic asymmetry is aggravated by the externally supplied heat. Separation of polymer blends is usually investigated in the bulk which is a tedious process and requires several hours for completion. Alternatively, separation in droplet configuration reduces the process timescale by about 3-5 orders due to a constrained micron-sized domain [fast processing and high throughput] while maintaining similar separation morphologies as in the bulk. We observed the effect of heating rates on the phase separation length and timescales. Furthermore, the separation length scale can be precisely controlled across one order by simply tuning the heating rate. The methodology can be scaled up for applications ranging from surface patterning to pharmaceutics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India. sbasu@mecheng.iisc.ernet.in.
authors.forename: Binita
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Pathak
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India.
authors.forename: Priti
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Xavier
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India.
authors.forename: Suryasarathi
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8043-9192
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bose
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India. sbasu@mecheng.iisc.ernet.in.
authors.forename: Saptarshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Basu