LATE-STAGE 2-DIMENSIONAL COARSENING OF CIRCULAR CLUSTERS

The size distribution of circular clusters resulting from a computer simulation of the late stages of phase separation in two dimensions was recently reported by Rogers and Desai [Phys. Rev. B 39, 11 956 (1989)]. The distribution that evolved was considerably broader than that predicted by an analytical version of the Lifshitz-Slyozov theory of late-stage coarsening in two dimensions. The results of the numerical analysis are compared with an older version of the two-dimensional theory which includes the effect of diffusive correlations among nearest-neighbor clusters; the correlations are related to the volume (area) fraction of clusters. The size distribution predicted by the older theory is in much better agreement with the numerical data. The implications of this agreement for the late-stage coarsening of three-dimensional clusters are discussed. © 1990 The American Physical Society.