MORPHOLOGY OF SPINODAL DECOMPOSITION

The morphology of homogeneous phases during spinodal decomposition, i. e., the scaling of the content, shape, and connectivity of spatial str uctures is described by a family of morphological measures, known as M inkowski functionals. Besides providing means to determine the charact eristic length scale L in a statistically robust and computationally i nexpensive way, the measures allow also one to define the crossover fr om the early stage decomposition to the late stage domain growth. We o bserve the scaling behavior L similar to t(alpha) with alpha = 1/3, al pha = 1/2, and alpha = 2/3 depending on the viscosity. When approachin g the spinodal rho(sp), we recover the prediction L similar to(rho-rho (sp))(-1/2) for the early time decomposition.