Microphase separation patterns in diblock copolymers on curved surfaces using a nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard equation

Abstract.

We investigate microphase separation patterns on curved surfaces in three-dimensional space by numerically solving a nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard equation for diblock copolymers. In our model, a curved surface is implicitly represented as the zero level set of a signed distance function. We employ a discrete narrow band grid that neighbors the curved surface. Using the closest point method, we apply a pseudo-Neumann boundary at the boundary of the computational domain. The boundary treatment allows us to replace the Laplace-Beltrami operator by the standard Laplacian operator. In particular, we can apply standard finite difference schemes in order to approximate the nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard equation in the discrete narrow band domain. We employ a type of unconditionally stable scheme, which was introduced by Eyre, and use the Jacobi iterative to solve the resulting implicit discrete system of equations. In addition, we use the minimum number of grid points for the discrete narrow band domain. Therefore, the algorithm is simple and fast. Numerous computational experiments are provided to study microphase separation patterns for diblock copolymers on curved surfaces in three-dimensional space.

Graphical abstract