The Cahn-Hilliard-de Gennes and generalized Penrose-Fife models for polymer phase separation (Q255648)

In this paper, the author is interested in presenting some phase fields models. In particular, these models are presented for nonisothermal phase separation in a binary polymer mixture. Firstly, the author uses the known Flory-Huggins-de Gennes free energy and the associated degenerate Cahn-Hilliard-de Gennes model for isothermal phase separation in a polymer mixture to present a nonisothermal version of the Cahn-Hilliard-de Gennes model. Secondly, based on the Müller-Liu entropy inequality and the duality method, he presents a general conserved phase field model \((\mathrm{PF})_{\theta}\) with an extra arbitrary vector field. The latter model is characterized by the modified energy and the entropy fluxes. Finally, the relations between the \((\mathrm{PF})_{\theta}\) model and the conserved Penrose-Fife model are given; in particular, the \((\mathrm{PF})_{\theta}\) model can be shown to be a generalition of the Penrose-Fife model in which the entropy flux is modified by an extra term.