The topology and morphology of bicontinuous interfaces during coarsening

We investigate the late-stage coarsening of three-dimensional two-phase mixtures via conserved dynamics over a range of volume fractions. We find that the phases remain bicontinuous at volume fractions as low as 36%. The morphologies of these bicontinuous structures depend on the volume fraction, and they differ from the corresponding structure of a symmetric mixture coarsening via nonconserved dynamics. However, these structures have nearly the same scaled genus of approximately 0.13, possibly indicating a universality in the topology of bicontinous structures undergoing self-similar coarsening. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2009