Robert Kraig with Philip Taylor

A Kinetic Model of Phase Separation Induced by Photo-polymerization

Using a molecular lattice to model a system of monomer and liquid crystal molecules, differential equations will be generated to describe the time behavior of the system when it is subjected to a light source With the incident light acting as a polymerizing agent, two processes must be accounted for in the equations: diffusion and polymerization. The differential equations for the time evolution of the local species concentrations will be numerically applied to the system, with the goal of providing insight into the microscopic nature of phase separation  Results will be compared with experiment to determine whether the given model could adequately describe the phenomenon.